


Santa Barbara's Finest

by sebviathan



Category: Psych
Genre: (in that many canon cases are alluded to and there's an underlying mystery throughout the fic), Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cabot Cove Syndrome, Case Fic, Character Death, Fate, M/M, Psychtober, Reapers, Souls, Supernatural Elements, but death is not the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 22:58:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16463984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebviathan/pseuds/sebviathan
Summary: When Carlton dies, he's too young, too unfulfilled, toomiserableto move on to any kind of afterlife. Luckily, there's an alternative that suits his needs.When Carlton dies, very little actually changes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> about a year ago I made [this aesthetic board](http://bassiter.tumblr.com/post/167178402861) for this potential au, and here i am, delivering on the actual story. and JUST in time for psychtober, too.

1996

 

For the latter half of his time as a police cadet, there wasn't a doubt in the mind of  _anyone_  in the SBPD that Carlton would make detective as soon as he legally could. He was on a years-long roll, because he was a perfectionist in everything he did. He was handed more and more cases from higher-ups on a practically exponential scale.

He was in many ways overqualified to begin with, as much as that made many others resent him, with his education and academic achievements. It was due to those, funnily enough, that while in the academy he was repeatedly told that he  _didn't belong there_ , that he was  _too smart_ to be going into such a dangerous line of work. He found it odd then that they didn't consider that it becomes less dangerous, the smarter you are.

He was encouraged by Chief Fenich  _directly_ , over a year before he would be eligible for the position, to take the Detective's Exam and fill out the rest of the paperwork as early as possible. He was assured that there wouldn't be a microsecond of wait time, after he'd officially been serving for four years, for him to move up.

And Carlton wasn't the slightest bit cheated on that promise―he holds to that. Fenich couldn't have known what would happen in that parking garage an entire six months later.

 

An  _entire_  six months? No. A mere six months.  _Only_  six months. That's half a goddamn year. That's such a small fraction of his life―of  _all_  the years that he's spent working  _directly_  toward this.

His time as a cadet. His time in college for a degree in Criminal Justice. His time in high school, pursuing every relevant extracurricular that he could.

All his weekends spent researching law on his own time and rewatching the same Clint Eastwood movies over and over again.

All his summer internships.

He knew what he wanted to be by the time that he was eight fucking years old, and  _now_  he's―

He's―

 

_This isn't fair._

 

Carlton is twenty-seven years old, six months into his career as a detective, and he walked into this parking garage believing that he would apprehend a single, small-scale drug dealer. Now he's staring lifelessly up at the concrete ceiling, back against the pavement, a bullet in his brain.

Or at least his body is.

 

"This isn't  _fair_ ," he can hear himself say aloud, though in a manner different than how he has always heard his own voice.

It sounds almost the same as his thoughts do. Just with the added sensation of pushing the noise out of his mouth.

"I didn't―"

He would believe that he was only dreaming if he hadn't had so many dreams in this setting before, and if  _none_  of them felt even close to the way he does now. If the fact that he is cut off from the world wasn't so  _painfully_  present. If the sight of his own dead body on the ground didn't make him so unprecedentedly sad.

"I didn't get to do ANYTHING!" Carlton shouts through a choked sob―and does not hear it echoing back to him like it should be, and does not feel any pain in his fists as he punches the ground, and does not go blind behind his tears... which only makes him feel more alone.

"This  _can't_ ―I didn't even save anyone with this. I didn't even  _stop_  anyone, I didn't even get to sacrifice myself for something, I didn't even leave behind anyone who cared about me enough to avenge me, I didn't even get to be murdered intentionally or by someone who  _knew_  me, I was just a faceless cop to this guy, I didn't even get to have some badass last words, I didn't even get to  _look_  cool―look at me, my neck's all bent and gross, I look fucking STUPID!" Another loud, unreal sob rips itself from him. "That... that doesn't even look like me, what the fuck! Did I really look like that? Did I really just never fucking matter? Did―?"

"You did matter," comes a voice that Carlton doesn't recognize. For a moment he's terrified, and then he looks up to see a cloaked, dark-haired woman sitting on the hood of a car. With a face he also doesn't recognize, but which holds some rustic charm that he finds himself inclined to trust. "...That just means something different for everybody, Carlton."

In spite of her knowing his name, hearing  _that_  makes him throw that trust right out the window.

"And how the hell would  _you_  know what it means for me?"

She looks surprised for a moment before getting off the car and walking toward him.

"Because I've watched a thousand others go through this precise thing. Everyone wants to believe that life is a narrative, but for most, it just isn't. A lot of people don't ever truly get a climax. What you do get, however, is a chance to move on." She stops in front of him with an almost motherly smile, and extends her hand. "And you're only going to feel worse the longer you remain in limbo. Come on."

He understands what this woman is, now. But the thing that repulses Carton enough to stand up and back away isn't her nature so much as... her attitude.

"I'm  _not_  most people," he spits.

She sighs. "Listen, I understand―"

"NO, you don't! You don't understand a damn thing! I―I have worked my  _entire_  fucking life to be where I am now and I  _just_  got here. This has to be a fluke.  _This_ is... god, this is the most meaningless death that a homicide detective could  _possibly_  have. This is a goddamn JOKE! And what, what am  _I_ , huh? What were the past twenty years of my life? A mistake? Just a funny story about―fucking, I dunno, irony? All that work for fucking NOTHING?"

That very last, ragged shout actually does seem to echo. The woman across from him abruptly glances around, and when she looks back to him, her gaze is significantly heavier than it was a moment ago.

"I refuse," he continues, unbothered by her expression. "This  _can't_  be my end. I won't let it be."

Only a second or two after he finishes does Carlton notice that the parking garage has darkened considerably, despite it being early in the day. It isn't the sort of darkness that is a mere  _lack_  of light, though. It's concentrated darkness, closing in on them.

It feels like he's the one that caused it.

The look on his would-be reaper's face seems like she knows that to be true.

"...Dammit, I know you won't," she finally says, sounding resigned. She's regarding the darkness around them the way that he might have looked at a particularly large stack of paperwork. "You―you  _have_  to understand, though, I can't turn back time. I can't put you back in that body without creating one hell of an abomination and  _especially_  not without losing my job. And I know that you _do_  understand that―you're a logical man, a man of justice. Hell, now that I'm looking at it from this angle... your soul is by far the most genuinely inclined toward justice that I've ever seen. But― _Carlton_. It is... very important that you calm down right now, because otherwise, I will not be able to give you this deal."

The final proof he needs is that upon hearing that, some form of his heart jumps and the darkness simultaneously fades.

 

*

 

_You have made it clear with your will that likely no reasonable number of us could_ _**force** _ _you to move on properly―and with your misery that, if we tried, you would only create for yourself the worst sort of hell._

_You would in fact be better off roaming the in-between for possibly centuries, with only your own misery to fuel you, until your soul either finds catharsis or withers away into pure malicious energy, than to Move On in that state._

_**But!** _ _We can offer you a third choice. A very_ _**rare** _ _choice. You have the tenacity and intrinsic power that it takes to bear the responsibility that we bear. You have the mind to fathom the complexities of our system, and the heart to exact its justice._

_What we cannot know, however, is the future. We do not know how likely it may be that you will one day change your mind._

_If you accept this role, your ability to ever properly move on will cease. You will remain in the in-between with only marginal more influence over the living realm than the most tortured ghost._

_You will travel no further than the afterlife's borders. Your soul will no longer have the capability―it will be_ _**more** _ _than a mere soul, and it will not be fit for interacting with those who have Moved On._

_You will reap souls._

_You will subdue stragglers to the best of your ability._

_You will enforce the rules of Life and Death and Fate._

_This will be your eternity._

_...How does that sound to you?_

 

In spite of the discomfort he feels in the presence of what is not only two skeletal beasts, but two entities of incredible,  _undeniable_  cosmic authority... there is absolutely no question that Carlton will take this deal. After all, what else does he  _have_?

But now that this notion is his reality, and now that he  _has_  calmed down... one bit of curiosity and hope has taken enough hold of him that he  _cannot_  help but ask,

"One thing―do I get a horse?"

 

*

 

Once he makes the change, Carlton can manifest in any way that he  _wants_ , within reason. But he learns quickly that if he so chooses to manifest a horse, it will be nothing more than a tool. An extension of himself with no actual mind nor feelings nor soul of its own. The mental effort required to even make it behave like a real horse would be, in the words of other reapers, counter-productive.

Acquiring the soul of a once-living horse as a companion is impossible as well, because "to force something as inherently innocent as an animal to remain a ghost for all eternity would be cruel, and  _as_  such is strictly against the rules."

And even if it wasn't, "prolonged exposure to a reaper has...  _unfortunate_  effects on regular souls that have crossed the threshold."

That's precisely how it's said to him, multiple times. The dramatic pause. The emphasis on 'unfortunate.' No one will tell him what that means. He eventually assumes that it must be too terrible to know, as curious as he remains.

He at least gets an idea of what would make him so volatile with a regular soul, though, when he  _does_  make the change.

It isn't painful, but it's far from simple. It's uncomfortable in a way that Carlton cannot distract himself from. It's... like being awake and cognizant during an invasive surgery, though physically numb to the process.

For an indiscernible amount of time (which may not even be a real thing anymore), Carlton's soul is  _open_. Meticulous hands reach in and rearrange the things inside of it―and while he doesn't exactly know what each of those things are, he still finds himself feeling an incredible sense of loss as some of them are removed, and briefly thinking  _no, not THAT!_  ...Until, moments later, each of them are replaced with something else equally unnameable, but which fills a spot roughly the same size and weight.

Some things are simply  _moved_ , for reasons he is told would take him centuries of experience to properly fathom. And some things are added that do not replace anything, but which only give him discomfort. He's told that he'll be able to break them in.

When his soul is finished and shut―when it is officially no longer a  _soul_ , Carlton's discomfort ends and something else begins. Something not yet good, but intense. Something distinctly different than the way he was before, but still entirely within the same man he's always been. Something that is  _more_  than just being more powerful, more than having new abilities... even more than a newfound sense of home in this plane.

Carlton was raised Catholic. As many do, he renounced that upbringing at a young age. But the images and stories he was fed of biblical figures didn't leave him.

Knowing what it feels like to  _be_  one of those figures, now, makes it difficult to be disappointed about anything in the moment. Not even his own death. Least of all something so insignificant as how he  _can't have a real horse_ ―even if that really would have completed the biblical image that he wanted.

It wouldn't be the same with a mindless horse, anyway. But he doesn't need that image. He doesn't need  _anything_  anymore.

Because if Authority as a concept could be physically contained,  _that's_  what quite literally flows through his veins, now.

 

***

 

He  _tries_  not to need anything. That attitude seems to be encouraged, as long as he retains contact with other reapers. It only makes sense, really, to distance your emotions as well as you can from the living realm―to make the job easier. And that's what this is more than anything. A job.

The training is woefully short, however.

He doesn't need to be given any kind of list of rules or code of conduct, for that was one of the things added to the very fabric of his soul. That and all the other objective knowledge he needs to carry out this work. He doesn't even need to spend time wondering before he recalls any rules. He simply Knows them.

He does need to have supervised field experience for the more personalized, subjective things, but it's finished after merely three more deaths:

He takes the backseat as a hidden observer on the reaping of an old man, done by the woman who attempted to reap him. She takes a skeletal form to do so, as that is what this old man wholeheartedly expects. She tells him afterward that that was the absolute  _ideal_ scenario.

Then he takes the driver's seat on the reaping of a woman who died while giving birth. He has experience in delivering bad news like this, but it's odd to be giving it to the deceased themself rather than their loved ones. It's rough, and he receives disapproving looks from the older reaper for his choice of words, but it works nonetheless.

Then he is tasked with the same for a man who killed himself in prison, presumably out of guilt for killing a teenager in a drunk driving incident. Part of him wants to drag this miserable soul to hell, if only because he  _remembers_  that incident and moreso the distraught family mere feet from him in the courtroom―but he quickly understands how unjust that would be. He peers into this man's soul and finds nothing but genuine guilt. And he makes the judgment call to leave it alone.

_Then_  he is formally assigned to the greater Southern California area as one of its regional enforcers of Life and Death and Fate, and... that's about it as far as reaper companionship goes.

It gets much harder to  _not need anything_  after that.

It might be easier if Carlton didn't stay in Santa Barbara. He wouldn't have to be constantly, visibly reminded of the life that he's lost. He wouldn't have to see people that he knew and subsequently refrain from trying to interact with them, lest he break one of the most  _basic_  rules of not interfering with mortal affairs.

But at the same time, it is by far the biggest relief he has had since dying, to walk along the streets that he knows by heart, and to watch the citizens he swore to protect in real time. To even walk into the SBPD as though he still works for them. To almost believe for a second that he  _does_ , for how truly similar his new position is. Even if he can do nothing more than observe, it's the best thing he has.

_Yes,_  Carlton insists to no one in particular,  _even_  if what he's observing is the aftermath of his own death, and if it lacks enough in hooplah to match the death itself.

(It's been two weeks, by the time he returns. His funeral has already passed. He's almost glad that he has no way of knowing what was said. He's entirely disappointed that his body couldn't be burned at sea like he wanted, nevermind that he already knew it wasn't legal. The next best thing was to cremate him and dump his ashes in the ocean and, even though Carlton signed off on that compromise years ago, he finds himself even more disappointed that his body now lies in so many untraceable pieces.)

...Even if he is sorely tempted to make himself noticed, make someone believe that they saw his ghost, just so he can know how they feel.

He  _knows_ , as deeply and certainly as he knows the rules that he must now uphold, that he cannot have it, but that does nothing to keep him from wanting his life back. He doesn't want to need this place. He doesn't want to become detached from it, either. He just wants to be here.

He's sure that he can make it work.

No one is around to advise him against it, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

Time does, in fact, still exist where he is. It passes no differently in the in-between than it does in the living realm.

As time marches on, the population rises. The rate of death and of spiritual crimes rises. The number of reapers must grow so that souls that cross over for any reason may be addressed in real time.

So it makes  _sense_  that almost every single reaper that Carlton crosses paths with was once living, like him. But that doesn't stop it from also making him even more reluctant to interact with others. He doesn't need to see them embracing their departure from life while he still can't―and simultaneously it embitters him to know that he is actually  _not_  as special as he initially thought.

If nothing else, remaining ignorant of what others do allows him to focus on his  _own_  work.

The years pass, and he wills them to manifest with the rest of him. He doesn't plan to age  _forever_ , of course, but for now his soft face can surely take it.

His state of dress is subject to change with the weather but defaults to a perfectly tailored, charcoal-gray tactical suit. Pinstripe white shirt. Black, skull-patterned tie―for a touch of flair. Wing-tipped shoes that he'd  _wished_  he could afford when he was alive.

What may have taken the form of a scythe in older times, he manifests into a gun and handcuffs. He manifests a badge that bears a number he did not personally think up―he assumes that it must accurately reflect his place as a reaper. It's a bigger number than he expected. He'd manifest a car, too, if it wasn't entirely unnecessary and didn't feel like overkill.

And if arriving in a puff of smoke didn't feel  _much_  cooler.

 

Carlton won't lie―not that he'd have anyone to lie to, but he won't―he comes to deeply prefer ferrying innocent and willing souls to their heaven than the more complicated and darker decisions.

It isn't the same as sending criminals to prison, like he thought it might be.

He doesn't  _enjoy_  dragging even the most disgusting, unrepenting souls to their hell with his own two hands. It doesn't get more enjoyable if he manifests as something else while he does it, either.

But he still feels the most purposeful when he does it.

 

Without much else to do with himself when there are no souls to be reaped, Carlton keeps up his mortal habits. Follows criminals around―violent ones, especially, as death is sure to follow them. Wastes no time whatsoever in reaping the souls of their victims, in assuring them that they'll be avenged and that he'll  _personally_  see to it.

Sticking around the SBPD allows him organized access to information about this city's criminals, too. It also pains him to do so, however, when he has far more significant information than they do and isn't  _allowed_  to give it to them.

There's no investigating needed in order for him to find a killer, anymore. When a death is in the process of occurring―which may sometimes be  _long_  before the soul actually crosses over―the reaper in closest proximity is alerted. Carlton simply  _feels_  it, and with very rare difficulty finds the scene, and if it's a murder scene? He has them right there. He knows who they are.

And he can't do a damn thing about it.

Ending someone's life as a fellow living person isn't against the rules of Life or Death or Fate. That's just what Life and Death and Fate  _are_. It's a matter only of morality. It's for the living law enforcement to deal with.

It's an unfortunate misconception that he held during his life―reapers are not the cause of death.  _Death_  is the cause of death. Reapers make sure souls go where they're supposed to go in order to maintain balance between the living realm and the in-between. Reapers are the keepers of order and justice and chaos and entropy. Reapers deal in matters of the metaphysical, not the material. Reapers do  _not_  get a say in how fate moves along.

But then, Carlton has always known how to work around the rules that he felt limited actual justice.

So he can't give any information of a killer's whereabouts to the mortal authorities. He can't physically harm the killer in any way. He can't even try to tell the killer to stop killing. That's all fine―he just has to work with more...  _subtlety_ , now.

It doesn't count as interfering with the material world, Carlton doesn't think, when he could reasonably argue that he had no way of knowing the effect it might have.

If he takes the physical form of a small, inconspicuous creature such as a crow while watching over someone, and if that person happens to be the sort to consider that an omen, that isn't  _his_  fault, is it? If he pops into view now and then through the reflection in a mirror, or in a shadow, or at the base of a distant streetlamp―that's just inevitable, with liminal spaces and the like. And if some of those times he manifests with the visage of the various people that that person has killed, and if it happens to drive them crazy or even to suicide... well,  _clearly_  they already felt guilty enough to do that, anyway.

Years pass. He continues to deal with the homicidal maniacs of Santa Barbara this way and faces absolutely no retribution from above, no matter how well it often works. Not even after he has no choice but to blow one particularly malicious and willful runaway soul to  _smithereens_ ―lest he allow it to become an overpowered source of chaos out there in the ether, of course, but it brings him no pleasure to destroy a consciousness entirely.

Perhaps it's only that true omnipotence exists in no one, and perhaps one day the higher authorities will manually discover his journey through the loopholes and act accordingly. Perhaps he'll be punished with that same sort of destruction.

The thought is terrifying, but it changes nothing.

He doesn't think that he'd have been made a reaper in the first place if those above didn't trust his judgment, after all.

 

***

 

2003

 

Yin and Yang have struck twice more since he died, and he's  _still_  in the process of wearing them down.

The former is a genuine, convictionless psychopath, truly confident that he will face no consequences in life nor death. He walks through daily life so casually, as though he's never done wrong. As a highly successful Literature professor he has influence over hundreds of lives on any given day, and none suspect a thing. Carlton has even gone so far as to enter the man's dreams. He found them no more emotionally charged than a toothpaste commercial.

The latter, meanwhile, is a soul that Carlton pities more than otherwise. She's a pawn. She's the face of the Yin/Yang murders and the daughter of the true mastermind, manipulated and abused and raised into his homicidal lifestyle since birth. Even well into her adulthood, now, she lives entirely under his control and has been sheltered from virtually any human interaction―to the extent that she's been obsessing over a family that used to live down the road, whom she's had little actual contact with, for almost twenty years.

She deeply unnerves him, almost more than her father does. It often feels like she can see him even when he doesn't want her to.

Carlton doesn't think she  _deserves_  to be dead (or even that her father wouldn't be able to kill again with her dead) so much as that he believes... she'll be freer once she is.

The SBPD, infuriatingly, hasn't a single clue of their true identities. The one actual  _expert_  they have on the Yin/Yang murders hardly even has a cohesive profile on them, and his suspicions that "Yang may have a partner" are non-committal at best.

In a way it's a  _relief_ , due to all of this, when Santa Barbara is terrorized by a new serial killer.

The Back Bay Killer gives Carlton an excuse to turn his attention away from the frustrating endeavor that are Karl and Allison Rotmensen. His murders aren't particularly creative or brutal, but they strike fear into the citizens of Santa Barbara nonetheless.

Mainly the women of Santa Barbara. It's always  _some_  disenfranchised group that these bastards are after―some psychosexual thing, nine times out of ten. Some deep-seated hatred that they've convinced themself is righteous.  _This_  guy is ultimately a run-of-the-mill Bundy type who wants revenge on women for not finding him attractive. Yawn.

Unoriginal of a killer as he is, though, there's no question that Carlton would prefer spending these months actually  _succeeding_  at exacting some justice.

After the first month and three murders, he feels confident that this will play out more or less like all the precedents that have been set: The Back Bay Killer will briefly soldier on through the newfound paranoia that Carlton has planted in him. He will grow terrified of being caught, despite how far off the SBPD's current leads are. He will take one, maybe two more victims, but he'll screw up in some way. His fear will ironically be the thing that damns him. If he kills himself before he can be caught, good. If he makes it to prison where it'll be decades before his death sentence will actually finalize, that's... fine. Carlton can still work from there.

Probably the  _last_  thing Carlton could have expected, meanwhile, was that a civilian would not only take it upon themself to investigate, but wind up far closer than the actual police and right in the killer's wake.

 

*

 

"You're lucky that all he did was run you off the road, you know."

He doesn't often taunt the souls that he reaps. But he also doesn't often watch someone do something so recklessly, lethally  _stupid_.

"Driving a motorcycle in the first place is already one of the most dangerous things you could do," he continues, walking down the grassy hill that flanks the highway, and coming to a stop next to the Back Bay Killer's latest victim. He kneels down. "...And then you had to go chasing what you  _knew_  was a serial killer's car, on it, instead of just calling the police. Why?"

Shawn Spencer frowns and blinks up at him. His body is splayed out at awkward angles in this ditch, a gash on his forehead where he made impact. His soul remains mostly in that same spot but shifted just slightly, which looks a bit like Carlton's got double-vision.

"You sound like my dad," he starts quietly, still lying there. "And for the record, officer, I  _did_  call the police. They didn't take it seriously. Figured the next best thing would be to get close enough to get the license plate and a look at his face." Then he groans and pushes himself up to his elbows. "Did you get him, at least?"

Carlton could understand well enough that the man doesn't yet realize what's happened―and why he'd naturally jump to assuming that Carlton is a cop. It actually feels pretty good to be addressed that way. But all that is overshadowed by confusion a moment later.

He furrows his brow and eyes Shawn over.

"Are you... still in pain?"

Shawn lets out a laugh. "What the fuck kinda question's that? I just got in a car crash, man, of  _course_  I'm―"

He looks down at where his physical hand lies next to his spectral one, eyes widening abruptly.

"...Oh, huh, I guess I'm... not. Wow."

Carlton can see the cogs turning and predicts the panic that this man is about to go into, and he reaches out to preemptively put a stop to it.

His hand grips Shawn's shoulder. Shawn's head snaps up.

"So you're... not exactly a cop, huh," he says, with a bit of a nervous laugh.

"Used to be," Carlton tells him. "In a sense, I'd say I still am."

Still wide-eyed, but calmer now, Shawn looks him up and down. "Sure dress like one. Nice suit, by the way. You also look..." He stares at Carlton's face and frowns for a moment, then. "...familiar."

Having lived in Santa Barbara for twenty-seven years, this is far from the first time he's heard that. He's reaped souls that he could recall arresting while they were alive―he's reaped one or two, even, who recognized him without hesitation. It's been a while, though.

And it's been even longer that, while he can draw up no distinct memories, he could respond with honesty and a scrutinizing look,

"So do you."

You'd think that being a reaper would give him an infallible memory, at least of his own life. But Carlton can only stare hopelessly at this man for several seconds, after which he snaps himself out of it.

"Listen―" He grabs Shawn's other shoulder, now. "Traffic cameras picked up your incident. They'll find that bastard's license plate through that and they'll realize who he is. You did something good with your death. And you can rest assured that when  _he_  dies, he won't be getting any of these formalities, and I'll be dragging him down myself. And... if nothing else, a roadside ditch is a pretty ideal place to die, if you ask me."

He's well aware that he's taking a risk, saying something like that. Gauging how well any given soul will react to certain things takes quite a bit of time for him―it's why he doesn't bother personalizing his reapings all that much.

But Shawn Spencer just  _looks_  like the sort of guy who'd appreciate a good, cinematic death scene.

"Oh, you're definitely right about that," he nods and says, confirming it. "Personally, though, I'd place it  _second_  to dying by firing squad. So, uh..." He breathes a laugh and puts his hand on Carlton's chest. There's no heartbeat in there, anymore, but if there was he's sure it would skip. "...I think I'll have to take a rain check on this date with death. Maybe some other night. But not anytime  _too_  soon―I'm all booked up with staying alive for a, uh... hopefully, a while. I'm down for a hookup or something else noncommittal if you are, though."

Carlton is about to laugh, but it fades quickly as Shawn pats his chest and proceeds to lie back down.

"Come on, man," he sighs, with a lot less patience than before. "It's too late for that. You know it. And the sooner you move on, really, the better."

"Yeah, the thing about that is, I really don't  _want_  to die."

It would be funny, how utterly casual Shawn sounds while trying to shift and situate his soul so that it fits with his corpse, if it wasn't at Carlton's inconvenience.

"Well, too bad, because you already have."

"Mm... nah, don't think so."

" _What_  do y―?"

 

There's no flash of light or anything fancy to visualize it―it simply happens. One moment, Shawn's soul is distinct from his body to Carlton's eyes. The next moment, it isn't. And Shawn's own eyes―the ones on his  _body_ ―snap open. And he gasps for air.

"... _What_."

Shawn doesn't acknowledge him, but just pushes himself up to his elbows like he did before. Touches the gash on his head and seethes, then feels around his neck and chest as though to make sure he really is alive.

He  _really_  is. Carlton can tell. Which keeps him frozen in place while Shawn sits all the way up and looks around.

While Shawn faces him again, but doesn't see him.

"What the hell?" Carlton says again, quietly, and with the sensation of breathlessness. "You... you can't do that."

In a panicked impulse, he does what he's  _never_  had reason to before and wills himself to be seen exactly as he is.

Shawn reaches into his jeans pocket for his cellphone and flips it open.

"Holy shit, it didn't break?"

Carlton tries to swipe the phone out of his hands. He phases right through it.

Shawn dials 9-1-1.

Carlton lunges forward to grab  _him_  and topples over instead, phasing through him and onto the ground.

"You DIED!" he yells right in the man's ear, though now mostly for his own benefit. "You can't just―you can't just CHOOSE not to die, you already did! You're DEAD, Spencer!"

Except... he isn't. He  _was_ , but now, impossibly, he  _isn't_.

Somehow, this man's soul never actually crossed over. And now it's blocking him and he can't even do anything about it because he can't  _do_  anything to a soul that hasn't crossed over...

Carlton has absolutely no power here, anymore. With each second his rage and confusion only grows because of it. But he couldn't leave this death scene with Shawn still in it―that is, before an ambulance shows up and whisks him away, even if he wanted to.

So for twenty or so minutes he remains, unseen and unheard, while he stomps around the grass and occasionally directly through Shawn, and while he shouts and shouts right into the void, and while he inspects every inch of the man and his motorcycle in hopes that he'll find an explanation for all this.

Particularly, an answer to the question,

 

_If this asshole could just_ disregard _death... why the hell couldn't I?_

 

_*_

 

True necromancy has fallen so far out of practice that Carlton has only the most basic knowledge of it stored in him, and he's had to use  _none_  of it so far. The closest he's come to dealing with it is having had to restrain and talk down a small handful of souls who were hellbent on living forever.

None of those were powerful enough to  _actually_  resist Death itself, though.

Sometimes miracles happen. Sometimes a person is truly in the process of dying, and the actions of another person, or some kind of medicine, intervene. Sometimes reapers are there to witness it. It's usually called a near-death experience and it's one of the many grey areas of Fate, presumably to allow for free will.

This... was  _not_  another person or any kind of medicine. This was not  _near_  death. This was plain, full-blown  _death_ , stopped heart and inactive brain and all―and the  _only_  thing that could have started Shawn's heart and brain back up to the point that all he needed was treatment for blood loss and a few fractures?

His soul itself.

An immeasurable sort of power lies inside _all_  souls, but... harnessing it while contained in a living vessel is not something done by even an above-average human. Necromancer or otherwise, Shawn Spencer is no innocent man. Carlton is certain of it.

He's also by far the most interesting case that Carlton has come across in this line of work.

It almost slips his mind entirely that the Back Bay Killer is still out there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the back bay killer, for anyone who might have forgotten, was a case canonically mentioned to have occurred pre-series in episode 10. in canon, it was a big case for lassiter and shawn was the one who sent in the tip. there's no mention in-show of exactly WHEN that case happened, but 2003 is where my headcanon timeline places it, AND which i actually keep pretty consistent to, if you're familiar with my canon-compliant fics.


	3. Chapter 3

"And you  _really_  don't remember what happened after you were hit?"

"For the sixty-ninth time, Gus, I blacked out. I dunno what else to tell you, man."

"Okay―first of all, this is only the fourth or fifth time I've asked. And... honestly, sorry, I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that you just happened to find the  _actual_  Back Bay Killer, and that all that happened was that he ran you off the road. I still don't even understand how you managed to figure out he drove a blue sedan in the first place. And then  _what_  are even the chances that the traffic camera would start to glitch out  _just_  after you crashed, and then stop right after the ambulance took you away?"

Shawn isn't denying at all that that  _is_  pretty goddamn weird. But any theories that he can think up other than "it was a coincidence" sound batshit crazy―even in the privacy of his own mind.

And he's just been through so much in the past few days that it's overwhelming to even try to think about.  _All_  he wants to do is watch some cartoons with his best friend, and to forget all of it for a while.

Gus at least doesn't take very long to notice the exhaustion on his face and completely switch registers.

"Fuck, Shawn, I'm sorry," he sighs, taking a seat on the couch with him. "I know I should just be glad that a serial killer is off the streets, and that you're alive..."

" _And_  that the police department's paying my hospital bill so you don't have to," Shawn reminds him.

Gus shoots him a wide-eyed look and a finger gun. " _That_  too. I'm serious that you need apply for some kind of health insurance, though. For my sake  _and_  yours. I swear I don't wanna sound like Henry, but. One of these days your cosmic luck is gonna run out, Shawn, and you gotta have something other than me to rely on..."

He trails off as Shawn's attention does and, as Shawn can tell out of his peripheral, follows his line of sight.

He honestly didn't just tune Gus out. At least not entirely. Rather, his attention was drawn away from his friend and instead to the sliding glass doors that leads to his friend's apartment balcony. It's pretty dark outside, but he can still pick out a fairly clear, black shape.

"How long has that cat been there?"

"More importantly, how did it even get up there? We're on the second story."

"Could've jumped from a neighbor's balcony," Shawn suggests, already standing up and limping over to the door. The cat remains still, seeming to stare back at him the entire time. "You got any cat food? Or cans of tuna, maybe?"

" _Oh_ ―no, Shawn, you're  _not_ bringing it in. If it's a neighbor's cat then it can get back home. And if it's feral, who knows how many fleas that thing has―!"

"Don't be  _rude_ , Gus," he snaps, not entirely as a joke. Then he slides the door open. "...And he looks pretty damn clean to me."

The cat, an  _immaculately_  sleek, black oriental shorthair, doesn't hesitate to walk right in. It walks only very briefly, however, before stopping directly in front of Shawn and reverting to its stiff pose. As it stares up at him, then, the icy blue tint of its eyes are impossible to miss.

"...Okay,  _that's_  just creepy," Gus says, seeming to take his time in approaching them.

Shawn scoffs, still returning the cat's gaze. "Or this cat is just very polite― _aren't_  you?" He kneels down and pets the cat from head to tail―to little approval, but no disapproval, either. "See! Aren't you just the  _fanciest_  little boy, huh... Hey― _are_  you a boy...?"

He scratches right above the cat's tail, expecting it to lift its hind legs in response so he can see... to no response at all. Huh.

"Alright, a little creepy," he admits. "But I think Oriental cats are just like that. And he's probably hungry!"

With that he's immediately back on his feet, heading toward Gus's kitchenette to find something for the little guy, or whatever the cat is. Gus himself is close behind, his footsteps harsh.

"Uh, Shawn? No one who owns a cat like that is too poor to feed it, and there's no way a cat looking like that is living on the streets. You are  _not_  giving any of my artisanal meats to him."

"Well shit, Gus, let's at least put down a bowl of water, huh?"

After doing so, Shawn turns around to see the cat now perched on the arm of Gus's couch. Still sitting in that same pose. Still eyeing him. It doesn't make any move toward the water bowl.

"...If that cat sheds on my couch, you're cleaning it, Shawn."

"You say that like  _I_  haven't already shed plenty on your couch."

He has no trouble understanding why Gus is wary of allowing this strange cat to stay in his apartment―nor why he's simultaneously too nervous to try to pick it up and move it. He feels a bit suspicious himself, even―

Until he sits back down, and the cat immediately settles in his lap.

" _Oh my god..._  Look, Gus, he was just lonely... And he's. Still staring me. Hm." But he runs his thumb over the cat's forehead and sees its eyes close for the briefest of moments. "...Eh, you get used to it."

 

*

 

Watching old cartoons with his best friend, stuffing himself on junk, and all with a cat purring in his lap... is just about the perfect way to recover from all that Back Bay Killer shit. Shawn's feeling relaxed.  _Serene_ , he might even say.

But the moment his thoughts resume in that direction, he feels certain that this just can't last.

"Hey, thanks for letting me crash here," he says during the next commercial break.

Gus's head snaps over. He knows what that means. "Already?"

"I mean―obviously not  _right now_ , don't worry. I should probably wait until my leg's healed a little more, anyway. But, uh." He breathes a laugh. "Sorry, man, I just think I've gotten my fill of Santa Barbara lately. Feel like I gotta get as inland as possible... Kansas, maybe. There's a hole in my heart that can be filled  _only_  by visiting the world's largest ball of―"

Before he can finish that, for no apparent reason, the cat in Shawn's lap abruptly sinks each of its claws right into his leg.

It lets go just as abruptly, but Shawn still decides it's about time he put it back outside.

 

***

 

2006

 

The souls of Camden McCallum Jr. and his lover, Malcolm Orso, are a fiery pair. Who  _wouldn't_  be, really, after 18 months of planning for a new life goes down the drain when you're killed by your own  _father_?

Not that Carlton approves of the staged kidnapping and essentially stealing millions of dollars from his own family. But money and material possessions are meaningless, here. Even grand theft isn't the sort of crime that warrants a metaphysical punishment, and in any case? Camden's family killing him right back makes things worse than even.

He and Malcolm, like many murder victims, immediately attempt to attack their killer to no avail. And after Carlton has them more or less by the scruffs of their necks, they demand to be allowed to haunt him.

"I promise you, that stops being fun much quicker than you think," he tells them. "Besides, you're not nearly as well-equipped for the job as I am."

Ultimately, the couple is convinced into compliance by the notion of an eternity together, in a place where money is no object. A happy, romantic end to a reaping that could have  _very_  easily gone sour, with now what should be the relatively simple psychological breakdown of Camden McCallum Sr. to follow...

It certainly  _would_  be simple, if not for the police arriving with the intent to arrest him far earlier than Carlton expected them to.

He's almost disappointed, but then he sees the man who's actually the  _front_  of this whodunnit.

 

*

 

For over an hour, Carlton peered directly into Shawn's soul and saw nothing of consequence. No signs of corruption nor deviations from humanity stood out to him. At the time, he could only believe that he just hadn't searched deeply enough yet, or that the man was still blocking him off somehow. But he never got a chance to search any deeper.

For about two and a half years, there was no sign of Shawn anywhere within Carlton's jurisdiction. Checking up on the friend―Burton Guster―became a routine of his, as the only seemingly sure-fire way to know whenever Shawn was back in town.

It seems  _now_  that he's been slacking in that routine.

He damn near manifests right in the middle of Shawn's "vision" about the murder, he's so fucking thrown. He's been waiting so long. He didn't even have to go  _looking_.

This time, he doesn't hesitate to follow him a single step behind. Mr. McCallum can wait.

 

*

 

"You're not a psychic, but you sure are  _something_. I  _demand_  you tell me."

Normally he's a lot more subtle while dreamwalking. He stands along the seams, blends into the backgrounds. Plays more than the role of an observer if and  _only_  if the dreamer approaches him first―as per the Rules.

Those rules don't apply to souls that aren't innocent, though. Carlton doesn't have to be  _passive_  anymore.

And now that Shawn's mind isn't blocking him anymore, either, he's taken full advantage of that fact and tried his hand at manipulating the dreamscape.

"Well, I'm a  _lot_  of things," Shawn answers, grinning and paying little mind to the ditch that they're standing in, nor the Highway 101 next to them. " _Handsome_ , first of all. A connoisseur of all things pineapple-flavored. Val Kilmer's biggest fan. Also Winona Ryder's biggest fan. And―"

He stops, seeming to notice, then, his own body on the ground. His grin drops.

"...and I'm dead. Fuck."

"Yeah, you are," Carlton says quickly, instantly switching his plan. "...So, what are you gonna do now?"

Shawn sighs. "The same thing I did last time, I guess."

Carlton leans in close with obvious anticipation―he doesn't think to hide it. "And what's that?"

"Easy, I'll just wake up."

 

*

 

Shawn vaguely recognizes that the man before him is the same one from the dream he just forcibly woke himself from, which in turn he  _swears_  is a repeat of some dream that he had a while ago, but can't be sure of. The odd thing is... he feels pretty sure that he isn't dreaming, this time.

Except he  _must_  be―why else would he be back in the McCallums' mansion? Why else would it be empty but for the two of them?

"Why does this feel so  _real_?" he asks aloud.

"Because I'm sick of your games, Spencer," the other man growls, poking a harsh finger into his chest. "I don't know what the hell you really are, but you better believe I  _will_  find out eventually. And if you want  _any_  possibility of an afterlife, you might as well just tell me right now."

This has got to be the most  _bizarre_  nightmare that Shawn has ever had. Usually this kind of weird existential shit only hits him in the daytime.

He leans away and blinks repeatedly. "Tell you  _what_ , man?"

The man grabs him by the collar and jerks him forward, rage quickly growing on his face.

_"Tell me how the fuck you survived getting KILLED, Spencer!"_

How he―?

 

Wait a second.

 

Shawn blinks again.

 

"I know you," Shawn breathes. It's coming back to him now. "You were  _there_. I... I thought that all that was just some weird dream, but..."

Carlton lets go of him and steps back. The notion that he's being presented with, now―that this man returned to life simply because he didn't know he was dead... it's impossible. And yet, everything about Shawn's response feels entirely genuine.

That means one of two things, neither of which Carlton wants to believe.

"So I...  _actually_  died. Like, legit,  _Pet Sematary_  died and came back―minus getting buried, I guess, but what else... Oh, maybe Heaven Can Wait―you ever see that one?"

It's Carlton's turn to blink in confusion.  _Him_  being confused in this space is really not a good thing to be, though, so he defaults to the one way he has to rationalize this:

"Don't play dumb with me. There's no  _point_. I'm right here in the core of your subconscious, Spencer, and I have  _nothing_  against tearing it apart until I find the truth!"

"Dude, I'm not playing." Shawn laughs. He doesn't even seem like he realizes how serious his reaper is. "Honest to god, I have  _no_  idea how I did it. I mean, except..."

" _Except?_ "

"I... only really remember that I was like, ' _damn, I'd really rather not die_ ,' so then I just... didn't. I force myself to wake up from shitty situations in my dreams all the fuckin' time, though, so it hardly felt any different than all of those times!"

"Except this time, you'd just crashed your motorcycle while chasing a serial killer. And the 'dream' looked exactly like where you'd crashed."

Shawn shrugs. "Yeah, man, dreams are weird."

He isn't buying this. He  _can't_  buy this.

Carlton stands there, scrutinizing Shawn in silence for at least a minute. Or what feels like one to him, as time does pass differently, here. He just... has no precedent for any of the possible explanations for this. That this man is so incredibly powerful that he could deceive a  _reaper_ , even within the dreamscape. That this man is more powerful than Death whether he knows it or not. That Death is in fact occasionally fallible, and this man simply caught a lucky break.

What happened in that ditch off the 101 three years ago is the only evidence Carlton actually has against this man's soul being innocent. The evidence  _for_  it stacks intimidatingly high.

That only makes the truth all the more elusive―and  _him_ , all the more determined to find it.

" _Alright_ ," he finally says, casually glancing around the vast, empty space and straightening his suit. Shawn raises an eyebrow. "Clearly you're not ready to talk, so I guess I'll get to tearing."

Shawn is about to ask what that even means when the other man―the  _reaper_ , he now fully understands―draws his gun. And aims it directly at his face.

For the first time in this dream so far, Shawn's fear truly spikes―

 

And before Carlton can even pull the trigger, he abruptly finds himself nothing more than a cloud of smoke hovering, invisible, above a very  _awake_  Shawn.

Dammit, he really should have seen that coming.

 

***

 

Shawn isn't surprised or even at all nervous to see him again, the next time he falls asleep.

"You know that if you try tearing my brain apart, or whatever it is, I can just wake myself up again, right?"

Carlton maintains the scowl that he's had since the moment Shawn started dreaming. "Unfortunately."

Over the past day, he's slowly and  _resentfully_  come to the conclusion that hostility would get him nowhere. If he wants an explanation sooner than later, he supposes, he'll need a more...  _civil_  approach. As much as he hates it.

There is one thing that's distracted him a bit from the bigger picture, however, and which he's even been looking forward to getting an answer to:

"So, how'd you get the SBPD to believe that crap about you being a psychic?"

When he wasn't busy with reaping, today, he was watching Shawn and his friend swiftly investigate and solve  _another_  murder. Apparently as "psychic consultants" for the police department, as well as their own brand-new private detective agency. It's the sort of thing that Carlton normally finds deeply annoying, seeing some completely inexperienced dumbasses try their hand at  _serious_  business...

Except from what he could see, and from what he recalls of the Back Bay Killer case, Shawn is pretty damn good at this. That makes it even worse.

"Actually―" he cuts in before Shawn can answer, "why even the guise of being psychic in the first place? ...Unless it's not."

"Oh!" That  _does_ surprise Shawn, almost pleasantly so. But then he hesitates. "Well, uh... oh, I guess a grim reaper's probably not gonna tattle on me, huh?"

He probably could have just told them the truth of his natural observational abilities, now that he thinks about it. But it would have taken time to explain. And Head Detective Barry sounded pretty serious when she said how all the tips he'd called in would be re-investigated if he couldn't provide any evidence to defend himself. And those holding cells just looked  _gross_. So he went with the first thing he could think of.

"And the  _Head_ Detective believed it."

"Sure did! And her partner―in both senses of the word, by the way. And the desk sergeant. And some guy named McNab. I can't be  _too_  sure about the Chief, but even if she doesn't believe me completely, I think she might just not care―"

"You've... got to be kidding me. What the hell  _happened_  to the department?"

It's not that he finds belief in psychics ridiculous despite the way he's existed for ten years. It's not that he could possibly expect the SBPD to tell the difference between a real psychic and a fake one, either.

But Jesus Christ, you'd think that a  _detective_  would be a little more skeptical than that, wouldn't you?

Shawn watches him pace around (in the unfinished Psych office, this time) with amusement, for a minute. Then it dawns on him.

"Hey wait―does that mean  _you_  used to work for the department? And you died?"

Carlton freezes where he stands, not because of Shawn's words so much as how the scenery suddenly changes around him. He's standing in a perfect recreation of the SBPD building, now. Specifically, at the memorial wall. Which Shawn has already begun perusing.

He doesn't know why, but he panics.

_You used to work for the department. And you died._

Shawn must have a genuine photographic memory, to be able to do this.

He doesn't want―

 

"Would you look at that," he says briskly, looking down at a watch that exists purely for aesthetic. "I have souls to reap, and it  _can't_  want. Why don't we pick this up later?"

 

*

 

Shawn is having a very surreal week. He's made quite a few big impulse decisions all in a short span of time, one of which was actually  _committing_  to a minimum of six months of a new career that doesn't actually guarantee him any money, he's solved three murders and four crimes in total... and he has a dream reaper now, if all that wasn't enough.

Balancing his daily fake psychic grind with a supposed cosmic entity entering his brain at night isn't the most  _impossible_  thing that Shawn's ever dealt with. But it is pretty damn hard that he can't talk to Gus about it.

Especially when he can't even pinpoint that good of a  _reason_  that he can't talk about it. He just feels silly.

He didn't believe the reaper thing wholeheartedly at first, of course. It seemed likely enough that his brain was just... on some weird shit. Dealing with all the changes going on in his life or something. Dreams are fucking weird anyway! Sometimes Shawn has memories of his life in them that, when he wakes up, he realizes never happened! He might have mastered a certain degree of control over his dreams by now, but that doesn't make him immune.

After the first few dreams, even after being reminded of his near-death experience, Shawn figured that the reaper was just... this sort of mean guy that his brain made up for him to face.

Then he allowed a whim to take him down to the police station―to get a real look at all those photographs of Fallen Officers on the memorial wall. Just to satisfy his curiosity, really.

He has to say, he did  _not_  think that he was going to find a picture with such eerie familiarity.

He especially didn't expect to find it familiar in more ways than one.


	4. Chapter 4

1995 (sort of)

 

"I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask for that World's Greatest Dad mug back."

"You just keep talking, Shawn―"

" _You_  keep talking."

"Oh don't worry, I will, like when I read you your rights."

"Ooh, I have  _rights_ , that'll be new and fun."

Henry jerks him around like he's about to hit him, and Shawn is almost disappointed when all that meets him is a desperate expression.

" _What_  am I gonna tell your mother?"

"I don't know," Shawn says carefully, "you think you can get ahold of her new phone number?"

"...I hope it was worth it, smart-ass. This officially ends your chance of being a cop."

Oh, you know Henry has nothing clever to say when  _that's_  what he breaks out.

"Let's be honest, I gave up wanting to be like you a long time ago." Shawn smirks as he says that, knowing damn well he's struck a nerve before it even shows on his father's face.

"That's it― _somebody_ , book him! ... _You_ ―Beanpole.  _Get over here, fingerprint him now._ "

 

Carlton's been on the force for just a little over a year, now. Detective Spencer has barely ever spoken a word to him before. And he's already had one humiliating incident of responding to something that wasn't for him.

"Oh I'm so―I'm sorry..." He's  _sure_  it's him Spencer must be pointing at, but he looks around to be safe. "... _Me_?"

The guy that Spencer's arresting laughs. And before Carlton can even really register it, Spencer turns away. He can just  _barely_  hear,

"Nevermind, rookie, I'll do it myself."

 

By the time he's caught up to the fact that the detective  _was_  talking to him, they're gone.

Carlton turns back to the receptionist, who seems like she's holding back a smirk. And he scowls, hastily scribbles out the rest of his signature, and shoves his handcuffs back in his pocket before stomping away.

"I'm not a goddamn rookie," he mutters to himself.

 

*

 

Entirely in 2006, again

 

It's far from a pleasant memory for either of them, but―

Being thrown into that scene, actually  _reliving_  it, actually...  _feeling_  like he was there, like he was alive...

And Shawn, now understanding what a life truly full of coincidence he leads.

 

"So I guess that's why you looked so familiar to me, huh?" he laughs.

"And vice versa," Carlton nearly whispers.

The memory would likely have never occurred to him without the immaculate recreation abilities of Shawn's subconscious. And now he's recalling more―that he didn't just see Shawn that one time while alive, but that he actually went and  _talked_  to him then, too. His curiosity got the best of him and he couldn't help but go see why the son of Detective  _Spencer_  of all people was in jail.

The notion that that eighteen year-old he met back then would grow into some expert necromancer... seems twice as ridiculous now, he has to admit.

He'd likely feel worse about it if he wasn't still hanging desperately onto that sensation of being alive.

"...So,  _Carlton Lassiter_." Then his head snaps up. Shawn smirks. "I totally get why you cut the dream off before I could figure out who you were the other day. I mean, your name really isn't  _that_  nerdy, but... I get it. If you're so bent on tearing me limb from limb, though, why ghost me for three whole days afterward?"

Shawn looks very proud of his ghost pun. Carlton, meanwhile, is trying not to look as stupid as he feels.

"I actually _did_  have a lot of souls to reap," he tells him after a moment. And it isn't wholly a lie―Santa Barbara has gotten an odd increase in deaths, both natural and unnatural, lately.

Though dreamwalking generally gives him the ability to avoid the constraints of time, to some degree. And he's also spent the last few days picking up the slack on his checklist of murderers to subtly drive mad. Making up for all the time he's spent focusing on this one man. Convincing himself that he wasn't just making excuses.

"And I'm not  _bent_  on 'tearing you limb from limb. Or tearing... any part of you, for that matter. I could only do that while in here, and you've made it clear that you won't let that happen."

That isn't a lie, either. The past few days have been enough time to get him more used to the idea that he'll have to do this the civil way.

Now Shawn folds his arms, looking proud of himself for a different reason.

"Damn right I won't. Well― _some_  parts of me, I guess I wouldn't mind. It depends. I guess for now let's just assume that my brain and my limbs are off-limits. The rest? We'll tear that bridge when we get to it."

Carlton won't dignify whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.

"...From here on out, Spencer, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just  _maybe_  your total disregard for the laws of the universe wasn't intentional," he tells him. "But don't consider me convinced just yet. I promise you, I'm not going to leave you alone until I figure it out either way."

As serious as the guy looks and sounds, and as well as Shawn now knows that this is  _real_ , all he can think to do is shrug and say,

"Hey, fine by me, man. I'd like to figure out what kind of latent death-defying powers I apparently have, too... Although, you know. You showing up in my dreams so much  _kinda_  makes it feel like I'm not even sleeping. You think you could find some other time to talk to me or... do whatever it is you gotta do?"

 

The thing is, even if it wasn't against the rules, it would take far too much out of him to physically manifest in most places. Especially those with a significant number of people.

"You're telling me that you can travel  _into_  my dreams, and you can turn into cat or a bird, but you can't just... walk down the street and make yourself look like you do now?"

"Ugh―it's just not that  _simple_."

He's never had to explain this to anyone before, and the concept he currently has of it, Carlton spent the last ten years figuring it out. But he can't help but still be frustrated, somehow.

At the same time, he's a little bit excited to have the chance to talk about it.

Manifesting physically never means taking up actual, physical space. That would break the law of conservation of mass―something Carlton intuited relatively early on. He isn't just bending light, either.

No, the extent of his existence  _within_  the living realm lies only in what others perceive.  _That's_  what he takes up space in. He will be sensed by anything with the ability to sense, in every way that there  _is_  to sense, and their minds and physiologies will react accordingly. Even while he has no functions or physiology of his own.

"If I tug on your arm, you'll feel the sensation of my grip and the force of my tug, and your body will jerk in that direction," he explains for the sake of Shawn's fascination. "If I scratch you, your skin will open up underneath the sharpness it senses, and you will bleed. And it is  _absolutely_  against the rules for me to do something like lift you up in the air... but if I did, well. You would be surprised what the human body is capable of."

It may as well be the same as existing physically, sure. Except multiplied by every single person and animal and plant within a certain radius of him.

And  _as_  that multiplies, so does his risk of interfering with Life and Death and Fate on a massive scale. He could be recognized and subsequently cause emotional distress. The unpredictability of his work could cause a very distinctly unnatural scene, which would then be spread around through the media. He has no way of guessing the effect that manifesting for even a  _second_  might have.

The only reason that Carlton is even allowed to interact with Shawn like  _this_  is because he's investigating a matter of Life and Death and Fate. And that loophole is only getting smaller and smaller.

He tries not to think about that, though. And he doesn't tell Shawn. He  _does_ tell him, however,

"Outside of the dreamscape, I could communicate either through whispers and touch... which doesn't exactly suit my purposes.  _Or_... I suppose, liminal spaces―where the living realm and mine are one and the same." Carlton sighs, already regretting this. "...Laundromats and empty parking lots and the light beneath street lamps in the very early morning are the easiest to spot, and generally work. During the witching hour, especially. But that's about it."

Huh. Nevermind that it would defeat the purpose of saving him sleep if he'd have to go find those places in the middle of the night, anyway... honestly? Shawn loves the sound of that.

 

***

 

Death scenes that are surrounded by living people are by far Carlton's least favorite to reap. He has to manifest a whole new scene entirely, lest the soul be too distracted to move on―lest  _he_  be too distracted to work properly, too.

In this particular case, Elvin Cavanaugh was an old man with a high cholesterol diet. He wouldn't have been long for this world even if he  _hadn't_  been poisoned, so his anger naturally does not last very long. He even seems to consider his "being murdered in the pursuit of justice" a noble way to go.

It would be a very swift reaping if not for the one part of the scene that  _no_  barrier could fully distract Carlton from―

The fact that he was actually at the scene  _long_  before being called by the stench of death.

Because he was following Shawn.

There's no possibility that Shawn caused Cavanaugh's death in any matter―Carlton  _knows_  exactly who poisoned the man and why.

...He also knows, after some time, that the reason that Shawn was at the spelling bee was essentially the very same reason that the spellmaster was murdered. So it's only Shawn's employment by the SBPD, really, that drew him here. Not some genuine psychic connection.

But something still feels off about it.

 

*

 

The first time that Lassiter appears to him in a mirror, it scares the shit out of him.

"Oh, did I forget to mention I could do that, too?"

" _You son of bitch,_ " Shawn says breathlessly, clutching his chest and leaning against the bathroom door. He can't help but also be amused, though, seeing a reaper pull petty pranks. In awe, too, seeing him so clearly reflected when nothing is actually there.

Carlton just frowns. "What are you doing in Detective Barry's hotel room?"

"What does it  _look_  like I'm doing, Lassie? I'm stealing these fancy hotel soaps." He lifts up a soap bar that's shaped like a cake and watches the other man's frown deepen. "... _And_  I'm looking through the case files, obviously."

"And you had to  _impersonate an interpol agent_  and get a key to her room, to do that? Why the hell couldn't you just ask to look at the file? She never bars you from anything."

"And you  _hate_  it because it means the SBPD's very foundations are crumbling, or something like that, and if you were in her shoes you wouldn't have even let me in the door― _yeah_ , I get it," Shawn says before Lassiter can go on one of those rants again. "But if she could see that I was making all my deductions from information that she gave directly to me, the whole persona of me being a psychic would be pointless. And I wouldn't get to have my big grand visions at the end, which is  _easily_  the funnest part."

"Hm."

Carlton still doesn't approve of it, but he supposes that he understands why Shawn doesn't have much of a choice anymore, after the legal corner he's backed himself into.

And Shawn sees that plainly on his face. He also realizes something.

"Hey―why are you even  _here_ , right now? Don't you have more important 'matters of Life and Death and Fate' to deal with than following me around all day? Is my soap theft gonna help you figure out why I'm immortal or―?"

"I've already told you, you're _not_  immortal―"

"―unless you're here to reap somebody... wait." Shawn's eyes narrow, and his gaze jerks back to Lassiter's. " _Did_  you... just reap someone? Did someone just get murdered? Does it have something to do with this case?"

_Oh, shit._

Carlton is well aware that his silence speaks volumes right now, but there isn't anything he could say that wouldn't speak twice as loud. With no warning, he does the safest thing he  _can_  do and demanifests.

 

He feels positive that the body of Dietrich Mannheim would have been found soon enough regardless, whether by Shawn or the police or anyone else. But that's no excuse. In ten whole years he'd managed to avoid interfering with the law enforcement he was once a part of no matter how much it pained him―and he is  _not_  going to go back on that now.

He can just feel that loophole getting smaller.

_I have to be more careful about this shit,_  Carlton tells himself for what feels like the hundredth time.

 

Meanwhile Shawn, now confident that there is a freshly-murdered body somewhere in this hotel, rushes out of the bathroom―

―and is harshly reminded that Gushas been in the room the whole time.

"Who were you talking to in there?" his friend doesn't waste a second in asking, serious confusion on his face. "You left your phone on the bed."

_Oh, shit._

Hopefully Gus will believe that he was wrestling with his conscience about whether or not to steal the soaps.

 

*

 

"You can't have a seance!"

"Gus, there are no rules about having a seance. Anyone can have one. It's like a garage sale―or plastic surgery!"

"Okay first of all, technically, you need to have a permit to have a garage sale. Secondly, you  _cannot_  speak to the dead."

But oh, little does Gus know.

Obviously Shawn will  _have_  to tell him eventually. But it's only been a month since the very first reaper dream, and for all he knows, it might all be over tomorrow! And then what would be the point? He'll have basically explained a bunch of shit that he can't prove whatsoever, and which would make him look crazy, for no good reason.

That, and he'll be passing "forbidden information" that could potentially get Lassiter in trouble. It's hard for Shawn to  _really_  conceptualize that when he's seen no evidence of other reapers, yet, but that does sound like something he'd rather not be responsible for.

"Just trust me, Gus," is what he tells him for now.

And then, to Raylene and her friends once they're all holding hands,

"My friends, I apologize―David himself is blocked from me. I do not know why.  _But!_  I can call upon the next best thing... the spirit responsible for ferrying his soul to the afterlife. I'm  _sure_  he'll know something..."

Shawn takes the tiniest of peeks to find that Raylene and Gus look equally surprised with him. The former, at least, looks like she believes it.

Right on time, he feels the telltale chill.

_Not on your life, Spencer,_  Carlton whispers into his ear.

"Okay, that's a good pun," Shawn whispers back, as quietly as possible so none of the women hear him, "but you're not  _seriously_  gonna leave me hanging, are you?"

_What the hell did you expect? I never gave you any hints before._

"I never did a seance before!"

_And?_

"And fucking come  _on_ , Lassie, this is my first real client. I'm  _trying_  to make a good impression."

_...And you think that means I'm obligated to give you something._

"Well―you're the reaper between us, man. You're the only one who's actually gonna know about this guy―"

_And who said_ I _reaped this guy?_

...Huh.

Shawn neglected to consider that as a possibility. Oops.

"You okay, Shawn?" Gus is the first to ask.

Just then, he can hear Lassiter smugly chuckling. It sends a chill of a somewhat different―somewhat  _inappropriate_  for a seance―variety down his spine.

"Y-yes, I―"

_Good luck cracking this one, psychic._  Then the chill is gone entirely.

" _Yeah_ , it's just... time for plan B, I guess."

 

The truth of the matter is, Carlton is by no means omnipotent. He may mentally archive every soul that he's reaped and every killer that he's vowed to slowly but surely nudge into oblivion, but most souls that he's never touched are completely off his radar.

He had absolutely no clue that David wasn't even dead. He isn't the only reaper in Santa Barbara, after all... And he's frankly  _impressed_  that Shawn was able to solve this as quickly as he did with no police resources.

Well. Minus the case file that he stole directly from the police. But he can't argue with Shawn's insistence that "it's not like they were  _using_  it."

And not just because it's true, but because he's too distracted by the much larger file that Shawn also stole.

"I  _borrowed_  it," Shawn corrects him. "...Courtesy of the desk sergeant and her grandma's ghost."

That is, he'd figured that as long as he was in the records room, he might as well grab one of the keys to satisfying a great deal of his curiosity. It was ultimately easier than attempting to get details out of Henry―or even spending the time to search for any information that might be public.

"That information is locked away for a  _reason_ , you know," Carlton says smoothly. He'd try to snatch it away if this wasn't the dreamscape. Surely, if the files can exist here with any accuracy, Shawn has already read it all. "Or do you just have no concept of privacy?"

"Ha! Kinda rich coming from the guy who's  _literally_  inside my mind, right now... 'Sides, Lassie, I didn't look at any of the stuff about your address or your family or your... GPA, or anything. Just your arrest record. I swear. See?"

He then hands the file folder over to him, which Carlton merely stares at for a moment before taking.

By now, he is fairly certain how this dreamscape functions. If he makes no effort to manipulate it, it's determined entirely by what's present in Shawn's subconscious. Even Shawn himself appears to have little control outside of being able to end it.

And the pages on his personal background are indeed too blurry to make out anything. The following on his career, however... are clear as day.

It's been a  _while_  since Carlton has remembered some of these arrests. Especially to the sheer  _detail_  that Shawn's memory has reconstructed into this file. He reads hungrily over his first handful of very small arrests―drunk drivers, teenagers out past curfew, trespassers... and then skips ahead to when his hot streak began. His first serious busts. His first... and  _only_  murder investigations.

"You were a really good cop." Shawn's voice snaps him out of... whatever he was in. It only registers to him now that they're both sitting on the floor of his dreamscape―the bank from this case. He can't think of much else before Shawn continues, regarding him with an odd smile, "I'm sure that file would need about ten more folders to fit in if you hadn't died."

_God._

Despite the absence of lungs or a heart in there, Carlton's chest  _heaves_.

"Yeah, I fucking know it would." He laughs mirthlessly, to keep himself from letting out a sob instead. "Thanks for reminding me, Spencer."

Unwilling to look at this reminder of his lost life any longer, Carlton shuts the folder and tosses it back and, in without so much as glancing in Shawn's direction, stands up and starts walking away. He wants to vanish altogether.

He doesn't know why he just  _doesn't_.

" _Woah_ , hey―" Shawn knows he's made a terrible mistake, at the same time that he can't comprehend why that would matter. Still, he stands up with him. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize it bothered you so much that you're―"

"It  _doesn't_ ," he blatantly lies, still not looking at him. He knows it's pointless. He doesn't care.

What is he even  _doing_  here? Has he even  _pretended_  to further his investigation of Shawn at all tonight? What the fuck have they been doing―just  _talking_? And not even about Shawn, but  _him_?

" _You know what_ ," Carlton starts, finally turning around again―"I see what you're doing. Trying to turn this around, make me forget that this is about you. And hey, at least I  _owned_  my death, Spencer! I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be! I made a deal, fair and square! But  _you_? ...Maybe it was just a mistake. I still can't say for sure. But you're  _supposed_  to be dead, and you're not, and that's  _not_  something to be fucking proud of!"

Shawn hasn't seen this much hostility in him this entire past month. He had no idea how much more terrifying it would be after a buffer period of civility.

He definitely had no idea of the concentrated, sludge-like darkness that Lassiter's rage could bring, slowly but surely closing in on him from all sides. (Oddly, though, it doesn't seem like Lassiter himself is even aware of it.)

"Are you sure about that?" he finds himself asking, for some reason, instead of immediately waking himself up. Maybe part of him knows that there's no reason to fear the reaper.  _Seasons don't._  "Because―I mean, no offense, Lassie, it kinda sounds like you're just jealous."

Within seconds, then, Carlton saves him the trouble of having to escape the nightmare and vanishes it all away. Along with himself.

He's still very aware that his silence speaks volumes.


	5. Chapter 5

Loophole or not, he's been talking to Shawn  _way_  too much. Inane, irrelevant conversations have clearly led to Shawn getting attached to him―even possibly coming to see him as a friend.

Which Carlton  _cannot_  be. Not to him or any other living person. Reapers are meant to be solitary, to be unbiased judges of the metaphysical and to  _not_  be involved with the material.

It wouldn't be such a problem if Carlton wasn't experiencing that very same attachment. But how could he help it? This is the first excuse he's had to have prolonged, repeated, two-sided interaction with someone in the past  _ten years_. This is the first thing resembling any kind of relationship that he's had since... he died.

Granted, he made an active decision to avoid contact with other reapers. For all he knows, perhaps some reapers  _do_  make friends with each other. He just never wanted to.

Because he wanted to at least  _pretend_  to feel like he was still alive.

You'd suppose that spending time around someone who is alive, even if they shouldn't be, would help. Carlton supposed it, though only vaguely. It didn't occur to him until it was too late, however, that it would  _stop_  helping once he was no longer in Shawn's presence. Perhaps even do the opposite of help.

At best, he's reminded too much of everything he misses about being alive and feels tugs at his desperation to return to it. At worst... he's distracted from far more important work.

It's embarrassingly late in the game for Carlton to just now make this decision, but he can't turn back time. He can only avoid, from now on, any part of Shawn unrelated to the condition of his soul.

He doesn't  _need_  to talk to him and never has. He doesn't even need to take up any focus in Shawn's subconscious mind while he parses through it. He can play a mere, silent observer, like he does with everyone else. He can exist on only the borders of Shawn's life like he's  _supposed_  to.

Shawn can even get better sleep and get his own life back to normal, this way. He's doing them both a favor.

 

Regardless of all that, Carlton still feels like a weight has been lifted when Shawn finally gets his nose into the case of Santa Barbara's latest serial killer.

Of course,  _technically,_  Wes Hildenbach isn't a serial killer until he takes a third victim. But Carlton believes without a shred of doubt that he will―and has done so before the man even killed anyone. The sort of rage and simultaneous indifference needed for premeditated murder gives the souls it inhabits a sort of glow, which Carlton could see in him when he reaped his brother.

Wes's first murder was ruled a suicide. These ones would likely have duped the SBPD, too, without Shawn getting involved.

The crazy thing is, as he watches the case unfold more closely than he's watched most others... he feels positive that even  _he_  wouldn't have seen this as anything but a suicide, were he alive and in charge. He watches Shawn's investigation and he _knows_  that he wouldn't have noticed what Shawn notices. A living, limited Carlton would have ascribed no significance to the behavior cues that go against the notion of suicide. He wouldn't have had the hunch in the first place.

It pains him to watch Shawn be so much  _better_  as much as it relieves him to know that justice will be served. Perhaps it would be easier if he could suspect there being an ounce of truth to the man's "psychic" schtick... But he just can't, anymore.

Shawn pulls all of his clues from the material world. Yet nearly every cop in that room seems convinced that he has extra-sensory abilities.

In a way, that pains Carlton even worse. It makes him fucking  _angry_! Not even to watch Shawn be commended, but to watch him choose to be seen as  _magical_  rather than an actual genius.

There's only one thing remotely supernatural about Shawn's cases, and it's the sheer number of them that he's managed to go through. And even  _that_ ―

Well.  _Huh_.

He might be onto something.

 

*

 

"Alright―you've been super mopey all week, and  _now_  you're straight-up creeping me out with how you're cuddling that cat. You wanna finally tell me what's going on?"

Shawn doesn't personally see anything strange about cradling a cat like it's a baby and rubbing his face into its belly and also making kissy noises... but Gus has got him on the "being mopey" part. He can't be surprised that his friend noticed, either.

He hasn't been moping on  _purpose_. Or he at least doesn't think that he has. It's just... it's  _hard_ , trying to deal with a problem that is real to no one but himself. If  _even_  himself.

He feels fucking stupid for letting it affect him like this.

"What's going on, Gus, is that you're too ignorant to see the  _beauty_  in a relationship between a man and his cat," he says, proceeding to give the little boy cat a kiss on the nose. "Love is love, man."

Gus only looks annoyed for a second before he narrows his eyes and smirks.

"It's some kind of relationship trouble, isn't it?"

Shawn tries not to appear startled, at that. "I'm not  _in_  a relationship."

"And that's the trouble, huh?" Gus sounds incredibly confident of this despite Shawn having yet to give sign of confirmation―but he at least goes from smug to sympathetic a moment later: "Oh―is it about Detective Barry's new partner? ...And if so, did she say why?"

God, he really didn't want to give anything away, but―at that, he just  _cannot_  help but laugh.

" _Oh_ my god, no, I haven't even... I  _wish_  it was something as simple as being turned down for a date, Gus."  _Or being formally turned down at all,_  he thinks. "And I swear, Juliet's barely on my radar. It's like, I guess if  _she_  was down to hook up, who would I be to say no, you know, but I honestly haven't thought about it more than―"

"That's enough information," Gus says swiftly.  _Fair._  "Just―if this isn't about her, then who _is_  it about?"

Damn. Shawn sure has backed himself into a corner, hasn't he?

 _Well, Gus, it's about this guy who died ten years ago and who now follows me around and shows up in my dreams all the time because it's his job to figure out why I didn't die when I was supposed to, except I kinda figured that there was a casual, non-professional side to it, except I guess I was wrong and he hasn't shown up at all in a week, and now I feel sad and almost even empty and isn't that just the_ craziest _fucking thing you've ever heard?_

There's just no way.

Although... looking down at the animal in his arms gives him an idea.

"Do you remember the last time I was in Santa Barbara, when I got in that accident with the Back Bay Killer, and I was staying at your place, and... there was, uh. That really weird cat that we let inside."

He looks up at Gus to find him slowly furrowing his brow, like he's recalling it, but just barely.

"Uh... yeah. But what does―?"

"It didn't actually act anything like a cat," Shawn reminds him. "It even  _walked_  weird.  _And_  I actually did some research and found out that an adult Oriental cat with blue eyes isn't just rare, but practically unheard of. Most cats' eyes change colors as they get older, did you know that?"

"Yeah, I did. But―"

"And then the weirdest thing of all, obviously... was that  _all_  that cat did was just. Stare at me. Like, the  _whole_  time. Like it was staring right into my soul, or something."

Without missing a beat, Shawn feels a tight grip around either of his shoulders.

 _Don't you dare,_  comes Lassiter's whispered tone.

Shawn finds it very difficult, then, to refrain from beaming in relief. Whether or not he genuinely intended to elaborate to Gus if he wasn't interrupted, he can't deny that this is what he was hoping for. At the same time that he feels a little pathetic, for it.

"So... are you telling me that you've been dramatic all week over a cat?" Gus asks, clearly bemused, while Shawn pauses.

 _I realized something,_  Lassiter whispers shortly after.  _Find somewhere to meet me as you get the chance._

"Well―" Shawn struggles to hide his shivers even after the reaper lets go. "I... yeah, Gus, it was a supernaturally gorgeous cat and I miss it a lot sometimes because I'm a sensitive, cat-loving soul. So sue me!"

 

***

 

As Carlton initially got the hang of being a reaper, liminal spaces became easier and easier to spot. Many of them have qualities that even a spiritually blind mortal could become familiar with, of course. But here and there are rifts that are unmarked by anything at all, and which may even be constantly on the move. His eyes have become attuned to the way that light is distorted, in each of those places.

Some of the more defined ones, he thinks, only  _became_  liminal once most of the living realm started ascribing that quality to them. They found it eerie, thus it became so. They all collectively expected to see ghosts when any given place of business was empty enough, thus the in-between began overlapping, there.

He's fairly confident in that theory, since he can't think of another reason why  _laundromats_  of all places would so universally be holes in the veil.

He understands why they're one of Shawn's preferred places to communicate, at least.  _Two bird with one stone._  As they say.

Carlton is waiting for him at the very back, sitting in a plastic chair and perusing a Home & Garden magazine. The washing machine closest to him is running with a load of socks―or would appear to be so, to anyone who might walk over here and otherwise find his presence suspicious. There are only two other people in here at this hour, neither of whom are anywhere close to him, but it's a necessary precaution regardless. He must play by the rules of remaining as passive an observer when it comes to the living as possible, yes, even in  _these_  places.

Here, having interactions with mortals, even unrelated to his work,  _is_  in fact perfectly allowed. So long as he isn't the one to initiate it.

And nevermind how many loopholes he's squeezed through to get to this point, Carlton feels worlds more comfortable doing this by the book.

 

Shawn walks in with a laundry bag over his shoulder and practically  _sprints_  to the back the moment he spots that familiar head of hair.

Carlton groans and wipes his face.  _Screw the book._

"Does  _discretion_  mean nothing to you, Spencer?"

"Uh, that's  _gross_ , Lassie." Shawn slams the bag on the washing machine adjacent to his and digs in his pocket for some quarters. "This isn't just a liminal space, it's a public one... Forgetting that, though―you had like, fifty more souls to reap the past week, or what?"

He makes a point of looking at his clothes instead of Lassiter, then, so he doesn't have to see his reaction.

Carlton wants to tell him that  _no, obviously I was avoiding you on purpose_ ―or... he wishes that he wanted to. Because for some stupid reason, when he opens his mouth, something stops him.

"...Not exactly, but that's not far off from the actual reason I'm here," he tells him instead.

Shawn's interest is immediately piqued. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'll... just get right down to it." Carlton clears his throat for no other reason than dramatic effect. "I don't know if  _you_  know this, but Santa Barbara has seen more murderers―whether they've been caught or not―in the past five weeks alone than the previous  _three months_. It might not seem like such a drastic change, but it is when you're the one keeping tabs on each of them... and the pattern just recently became clear to me: Five weeks ago, high-profile murders started happening at  _least_  once a week. You know what else happened about five weeks ago?"

He doesn't have to say it. Shawn had a feeling where it was going as soon as he started―though he didn't know he'd feel this mad by the end.

" _Wow_." Shawn slams the washing machine lid down and lets out a mirthless laugh. "So you're... accusing me of causing all the murders now, too, huh. Okay. Why don't you just kill me and drag me to hell and get it over with, then―"

"Calm down, Spencer, I didn't say you're  _causing_  them." Carlton sighs, and he decides that if Shawn isn't going to do this quietly, then he might as well stand up and close the distance.

Shawn pauses in genuine surprise, a shirt still bunched in one hand. Lassiter rests an elbow on his own washing machine and sighs again.

"I didn't ask you to come here just to insult you, believe it or not. But I do think that your presence in Santa Barbara and the rise in crime― _murders_ , specifically, is connected somehow. Not only  _now_ , but―the last time you were briefly here, three years ago. There was the Back Bay Killer. You also told me that you first left Santa Barbara at the  _end_  of the summer right after your senior year―and you know what happened that summer? The first series of Yin/Yang murders."

Shawn remembers that. Specifically, he remembers being eighteen and already having  _enough_  fucking problems that he ignored the news as much as he could, uncaring of whether or not he became a serial killer's victim. It still definitely isn't something he wants to be connected to.

" _I_  think...," Carlton continues, drawing Shawn out of himself, "that you may be some kind of literal magnet for chaos. Not even necessarily  _just_  murder, but... anything that should be happening at extreme random, instead occuring in one place."

"...Damn. Gus would have a  _field day_  talking to you about this shit, if he could," is the first thing that Shawn latches onto. Mainly, though, to put off addressing what all that means. "Um. So... do you think I should get out of Santa Barbara for a while to test that theory out, or―?"

"No, I don't think that would do any good," Carlton says quickly, surprising Shawn again. "That's actually the thing―I've  _personally_  reaped almost all of these victims, and followed their killers. They all had the patterns of behavior that commonly lead to a killer's state of mind going back  _years_. Which you  _weren't_  here for. Each of the individual factors that pushed them into actually committing the act had also been in the making since long before you got here. So... honestly? I think that all these murders would have happened anyway. Except I―I really don't think that there ever would have  _been_  an 'anyway.'"

He sincerely hopes that that makes sense. And, more importantly, that he isn't coming off as desperate.

Shawn frowns for a split second before it twitches up into a smirk.

"So like... fate."

"Maybe. I don't know, I―"

"Oh shit, I get it!" Shawn practically shouts, getting the other two heads in the laundromat to turn. But he pays neither them nor Lassiter's annoyance any mind as he continues: "Lassie, it's simple. I have a real-life case of Cabot Cove Syndrome."

The absurdity of it makes Carlton laugh against his will―and then the actual plausibility of it makes him laugh more. It actually feels good to be talking amicably with him like this again.  _Too_  good.

"Goddammit," he catches himself. "... _Maybe_."

"Or, wait, I guess it's not exactly like that.  _Santa Barbara Syndrome_  might have to be its own thing... but it's definitely along that vein. Shit, I actually  _really_  like the way that sounds. You think it has something to do with... why I'm not dead?" he finally thinks to ask. "I mean... it'd be kinda wild if it was unrelated. It's  _gotta_  be related, right?"

Carlton is suddenly, vividly reminded of the last time that they spoke. He hates how bad it makes him feel―that he even feels bad at  _all_.

He does his best to ignore it and simply tells him,

"That's another thing I guess I'll have to work on figuring out."

The he sits back down and lets Shawn finish loading his laundry.

 

***

 

He isn't very good at staying consistent with any of his decisions regarding Shawn. He is, however,  _quite_  good at rationalizing those inconsistencies so as to make himself feel better.

Perhaps having face-to-face conversations isn't a bare necessity, but that doesn't mean it can't offer any useful nuance! Certainly Shawn being involved in an investigation of his own soul can't  _hurt_  it. Especially now that they have a whole new angle to view it from.

On Shawn's end, Gus notes that he "finally seems back to normal―no offense, you know I'm happier when you're happier." He also undoubtedly believes the reason for that is the new pet cat that he  _officially_  has, following the end to that murder-posed-suicide case. And he at least isn't  _entirely_  wrong.

Truly, the two of them are more or less back on their previous routine.

 

*

 

When Carlton watches a Civil War reenactment turn into the scene of a real-life death (and yet  _another_  unique, premeditated murder), he genuinely has to resist the urge to tell Shawn whodunnit before it even becomes a case.

Though he does readily tell him  _that_  when Shawn complains yet again about being in the dark.

"Trust me, I'd  _love_  to put the bastard who'd desecrate the art of war-reenacting like this away as soon as possible. But you know I can't."

Shawn sure did know that, but now he also knows that Lassiter is a  _very_  passionate Civil War buff. Which... may or may not be a factor in him choosing to get himself a fitted uniform for this case.

He definitely notices Lassiter's strained expression in the mirror, once or twice.

 

*

 

Shawn has grown not to expect any hints―at least not deliberate ones. The only thing he  _can_  expect, regardless of how subtly he brings it up, is for his reaper to promptly disappear.

But the fact that Lassiter can't even tell him whether or not an alleged  _haunting_  is real, or whether a missing person is still alive, is undeniably frustrating. It's not even that he wants all the answers right away, or anything―he just wants to knock one or two out to save time! He wants to help these people faster! Is that so bad?

It's equally undeniable, though, that that frustration is only ever present at the beginning of a case. That the challenge is what makes this job fun in the first place. Even that the SBPD not actually limiting his and Gus's access much at all only makes him  _less_  interested in working for them.

He obviously wouldn't  _say_  that last one, least of all  _to_  Gus. He's sure that it would only drain his friend's motivation by proxy. Or even worse, get him angry and panicking that this will fizzle out before the six-month contract on the Psych office is up.

Honestly, Shawn  _has_  thought a few times about simply pushing this to that minimum six-month mark and then giving up. But he hasn't had that desire in a while and he doesn't think he'll have it ever again, at this point. Not when each case is another opportunity to delve into his Santa Barbara Syndrome, and to  _know_  that he brought someone justice not only in this plane but likely also the next―

―and to watch Lassiter grow slowly but surely impressed with him, in real time, as he gets closer and closer to solving it.

Whereas Chief Vick and Detective Barry and Juliet and the rest of the SBPD don't ever really hide their awe of his "psychicness," it's much more difficult to get Lassiter's open, unabashed approval.

Hell, even when it's not necessarily  _open_?

It's still there. Shawn can still see it behind layers of fake stoicism. He still feels a hundred goddamn times more accomplished and satisfied, knowing that the  _real_  work he did was appreciated even secretly.

He still has plenty of fun putting a finger to his head and occasionally pretending to be possessed by ghosts, too. The reaper at his back just makes it that much more thrilling.

 

*

 

It can't be appropriate for Carlton to be at his back, right now. The astronomer case is over. This is Shawn's leisure time. Death is the furthest thing from the mind of  _anybody_  here, if for no other reason than the alcohol clouding them.

He can't even tell himself that he has nothing better to do. He can't rationalize this as something relevant to Shawn's soul whatsoever. He's just...  _deeply_  confused.

"Why did you do that?"

Shawn only jumps just slightly―and really, at this point, only at all because he's in a public bathroom. He glances around to make sure that all the stalls are empty before responding.

"Uh... because my bladder was full? Did you forget about bladders―?"

"I'm talking about the  _girl_ ," Carlton snaps, at which Shawn freezes in the middle of dispensing soap. "Why did you tell her all of that? You didn't have to. I've seen you flirt with every marginally attractive person you meet for four months and yet this is the first actual  _date_  you've managed to be on, and you  _still_  throw it away after no more than five minutes! What gives, Spencer?"

About half-past tipsy, Shawn takes a moment to find the words.

"Damn. And here I thought Mr. Carlton Justice Lassiter would appreciate that I didn't let a girl do something she'd regret..."

"That's not the point," he scowls.

"Nah, I know. You live vicariously through me, I get it, Lass. You're mad I would give up easy dates when you can't have 'em at all. But you wanna know a secret, man?" He leans close to the bathroom mirror, vaguely aware that he doesn't need to. "I only said yes because it was by far the most spontaneously I've ever been asked out. I just wanted to see where it was going.  _And_  I already wanted drinks. I never expected it to work out. Sorry."

 _That wasn't the point, either,_  Carlton wants to tell him, but just then the bathroom door swings open. Which is his cue to vanish.

He supposes it's for the better, as he doesn't know what he would say his point  _was_.

Or if that would even be the truth.

Or how he feels about Shawn's failed date anymore.

He watches Shawn order another drink, and he wishes desperately that he could, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i highly recommend looking at the tv tropes page for Cabot Cove Syndrome, if you don't know what it is.


	6. Chapter 6

Credit card scams-turned-murders posed as alien abductions. A weatherman gets murdered. A tennis star gets  _almost_ murdered. All in the span of just a couple months.

What the hell is  _wrong_  with this town?

Even if it isn't necessarily Shawn, the idea that something supernatural is the cause of all the concentrated murder and mayhem in Santa Barbara is becoming just about the  _only_  possible explanation. What's more, the fact that the SBPD themselves don't seem particularly concerned, and that no outside agencies seem to be investigating it. If Santa Barbara continues on this path, soon enough it'll quite _literally_  become the murder capital of the world.

Soon enough, Carlton and the one or two other reapers floating around the county won't  _be_  enough.

"It's great for Psych, though," Shawn points out. "Gus and I have had  _no_  trouble getting clients lately―and do you know this is by far the best-paying job I've ever had? I actually have a real apartment, now! And I only have to mooch off Gus for food anymore!"

Carlton throws him a scowl.

"...Okay,  _and_  I borrow his clothes sometimes. But it's not because I don't have my own, I only do it when I don't feel like doing laundry."

He doesn't stop scowling. Shawn finally relents.

"Yeah, yeah, I know it doesn't help my case for  _not_  seeming like some dark, powerful necromancer who's purposely causing the crime rate to go up somehow... But hey, you'd be out of a job without all the chaos too, Lassie."

"I wouldn't be out of a job," Carlton grumbles.  _I can_ never _be out of this job._  "I would just have more free time."

"More free time to do stuff like this, you mean?"

Carlton's heart skips a beat. He can see Shawn smirking out of his peripheral.

They've shaken things up a bit, this evening, by having their conversation on a bench close to the pier rather than a laundromat or any other enclosed place of business. It's lit  _just_  well enough, with a perfect distance from any significant signs of life, nothing to be heard but distant, crashing waves... and all with a full moon perched directly above. Neither of them could resist―and why would they? It's a beautiful night.

It is, however, like  _most_ of their time spent discussing even the state of Santa Barbara or his soul, not entirely necessary. Carlton knows that Shawn knows that.

But he still refuses to concede it.

"Maybe it's 'free time' for you, but  _I'm_  in an ongoing investigation," he tells him.

"Hm. If you say so." Shawn chuckles to himself and returns his gaze to the pier.

He doesn't believe for a second that Lassiter has only professional motives, or that the man even thinks that he does. If for  _no_  other reason than the cardigan and peacoat that he's currently manifested in―with the buttons shaped like skulls, even, and the patterns in the wool somehow resembling bones. Lassie doesn't  _have_  to do all that. He's clearly capable of having  _some_  fun.

Shawn smirks again as he thinks of it. Then it occurs to him―

In several months, now, he's never actually thought to question that deep into the specifics of this supposed "investigation."

" _Hey_ ," he says abruptly, turning to face Lassiter again with narrowed eyes, and one arm around the back of the bench, "what  _are_  you even doing when you're... investigating my soul and whatnot."

Carlton blanches. "I  _am_ ―"

"No, I'm sure you are, I'm just... We talk, and you show up in my dreams, and sometimes you seem like you're concentrating really hard in those dreams, and I can only  _assume_  you spend a lot of time following me around because you rarely miss a good opportunity to whisper a clever burn in my ear... You said you're  _peering into my soul_  all the time or something, but―how does that all actually  _work_?"

Part of him is all too prepared to retort with something like  _the mechanics of it are beyond mortal comprehension_  and thus avoid the topic altogether. But then, he knows that that isn't really true―that Shawn is smarter than even  _he_  makes himself out to be. And that he doesn't actually have any good reason to keep it a secret.

So Carlton sighs.

"Imagine... that your soul is a book."

"It would be the edition of Berenstein Bears where they eat too much junk food," Shawn doesn't skip a  _single_  beat in telling him.

He cheeks back a smirk. "Imagine that it's a much longer book than that―"

"The complete compiled works of the Berenstein Bears."

"―and imagine that it has no table of contents or index. At best perhaps the chapters are marked, so it's relatively easy to see the most basic components of your soul, but for me to find anything more specific, I have to flip through manually. And for all  _I_  know, whatever holds the answer to your...  _multiple_  oddities, at this point, may not even be something that I can find conventionally. It might be something stuck between pages. A page might have even been ripped out."

That's about as far as he should probably go with the book metaphor, considering the look Shawn is giving him.

"...I don't know yet," Carlton finishes, in full honesty. "Souls are complicated and I've only been reaping for ten years. And  _you're_  my first go at anything more complicated than just... perusing the basic components. Cut me some slack, would you?"

He feels a little pathetic, justifying his lack of experience to someone who has none. But Shawn doesn't let him feel pathetic for long, as he  _instantly_  launches into asking,

" _Ooh_ ―so what's my soul made of? I know I already said it was the Berenstein Bears but I gotta come clean, I didn't actually like those books that much, and it was just the first thing I could think of, so I went with it. Oh, shit, I bet it's just skittles all the way down.  _Please_  tell me it's skittles. Or jujubes. Wait―is it sugar, spice, and everything nice?"

"Slime, snails, and puppy-dog tails would be more accurate."

He knows that Shawn had to be hoping for that, and the only reason he even understands the reference  _is_  Shawn because the cartoon came out after he died... but he couldn't resist.

"...Or it would be, if it worked like that. At all," he continues, to Shawn's evident disappointment. "As for your most basic components outside of what the vast majority of souls have, however... You certainly have a larger range of emotion than average."

"I am pretty sure that I've invented a few new ones," Shawn agrees.

"And... an unusually large storage space for information, too. A will to rival my own, quite honestly, an insatiable lust for adventure, and something that is just completely incompatible with monotony―"

"Sounds like you're just describing my ADD so far."

" _And_  a sort of charisma that I still can't be entirely sure  _doesn't_  have supernatural origin. And a surprising connection to nature, considering how much you seem to hate even sitting in grass. And, of course, there's all the empathy―though I'm not so sure I could even call it a 'basic component' when it's so ubiquitous and overlapping with every other part that it's practically what's holding you together in the first place..."

He trails off when he catches the way that Shawn is staring at him.

Leaning forward, arm around the back of the bench. Awe stretching his cheeks. Lips just slightly parted.

"And I, um." Carlton coughs. "I would list more, but it only gets more complicated as it goes on. It's... exhausting work."

He can't tell if Shawn has been leaning closer as he's been talking or if he's just getting tunnel vision.  _Can_  he still get tunnel vision?

"Why don't you just ask some more experienced reapers for help?" Shawn frowns and tilts his head and asks, like it should be obvious. "You do  _have_  some kind of boss, don't you? Otherwise there's nothing to really keep you from breaking more rules instead of just bending them..."

It's got to be tunnel vision.

"For that matter, actually...," Shawn continues when Lassiter takes more than a second to respond, his gaze down and vaguely on the other man's buttons, "...why didn't you call on some higher-up reapers to begin with, if you thought I was such an issue?"

_A desire to do my job correctly is what keeps me from breaking more rules,_  Carlton wants to say. Is urging himself to say. _I haven't interacted with other reapers in a long time. I would prefer to keep it that way. I didn't want to risk getting in trouble for the rules I_ had _broken. I didn't want to appear incompetent._

None of that is untrue. He could shut the question down immediately.

Shawn isn't smirking at him, now, but wearing a smile of genuine curiosity. Carlton doesn't  _want_  to shut it down.

His head is swimming. The heart he doesn't have is hammering away. Despite all the power he otherwise wields, he  _cannot_  will it to stop.

"Because I wanted you to myself," he tells him.

It comes out of him ragged. It gives him as intense nausea as it does relief. It's the truth.

Shawn straightens up without missing a beat―not to put distance between them, but to meet Lassiter's eyes more directly. To see his whole face more clearly. To be at his level, to regard him with dignity, to make it easier to pull himself forward by the back of this bench until―

_Oh._

_This can't possibly_ not _be against the rules._

Shawn's lips meet his, and Carlton recalls all of his own insistence of professionalism as he melts forward. He recalls the rules of passivity and reaches up to hold Shawn's face and pull him closer, even before Shawn's hands find  _him_. He recalls how little of a loophole there is to justify this as he moans into Shawn's kiss, into Shawn's touch.

He recalls how much he  _hated_  watching Shawn go on speed-dates over a month ago, even knowing that it was for a case.

_Shawn_  recalls how many dates he has sabotaged for himself in these past months, feeling like an idiot about it all the while. Then he recalls that he has to breathe.

And he does so in a shaky laugh against Lassiter's lips, still gripping the back of his neck in one hand and his cardigan in the other. He feels so warm, so fucking warm and  _solid_  and  _inviting_  beneath Shawn's hands that even as Shawn is breathless and shaking, it's all he can do to merely press his nose to Lassiter's cheek.

"Huh. Blue Oyster Cult was right."

He laughs again, and this time Carlton can see how far his grin stretches, how rosy his cheeks have become. How bright his eyes shine in the moonlight.

"You know, I always thought you'd be cold..."

_I could be whatever you wanted me to be,_  part of him thinks.

"I need to go," is what he has no choice but to say. Though he feels somewhat relieved in that.

Shawn's hands promptly drop from him, along with everything else.

"Lassie― _Christ_ , please don't―"

"No, I mean that I  _need_  to go. The liminality of this space is fading."

He blinks. "And?"

"...And anyone who glances this way might only see  _you_  making out with thin air."

Carlton almost can't believe that he's even stuck around thus far.  _Almost_ , but for Shawn proceeding to rush forward for another brief kiss anyway.

 

***

 

Still coming down from the high of kissing him (and feeling  _ridiculous_  for having such a high to come down from in the first place, because  _god_ , there wasn't even any tongue! what is he, twelve years old?), Shawn walks back to the Psych office at a leisurely pace.

Even so, it takes him only minutes to get there. And it only occurs to him that it may have  _not_  been the best idea to meet with Lassiter so close to his workplace when he opens the door―

―and sees Gus waiting inside. Standing up, already staring at him, folding his arms.

"Gus!" he greets casually as he hangs up his coat. "Kinda late for you to be here, isn't it? Especially on a full moon like tonight―we both know these walls aren't strong enough to protect from werewolves."

"What would a werewolf be doing at the beach, Shawn? Their natural habitat would be wooded areas. A  _park_ , at the very least. And more importantly―" He walks forward, making Shawn's heart leap. "What are  _you_  doing here so late?"

Shawn stands his ground. Puffs his chest up. "I asked you first."

"Actually, you didn't, but fine. I realized I left a book here and came to pick it up. Now it's your turn."

Gus sure looks pleased with himself―and almost certainly has ulterior motives. Shawn doesn't really _expect_  the conversation to end when he lies,

"I was walking around the area, thought I'd stop here to get a midnight snack. Is that a crime?"

But he couldn't have predicted how every cell in his body would freeze when Gus frowns, drops his arms, and sighs,

"Shawn, you know that I would support you no matter what, right?"

It takes all of his strength just to breathe. "Uh... yeah?"

"Listen... I  _understand_  why you didn't want to tell me," Gus says, moving over to sit on the office couch, while Shawn remains stiff by the coat rack. "I'm not offended. I know that I've probably said some things in the past―without even thinking,  _honestly_ , that would've made you afraid of what I might think. And I'm sorry that I've been ignoring that part of you for―god, probably our whole lives... But I just want to get it out on the table, right now:  _Shawn_ , I've been thinking that something was actually _wrong_  for a while, and I am...  _so_  relieved that all it is is a secret boyfriend. I swear."

Oh.  _Oh._

"Oh!" Shawn finally unfreezes. "So... you―"

Gus lets out a self-deprecating sort of laugh, and nods. "I promise I didn't mean to spy on you or anything, I just―saw you with some guy I didn't recognize and wanted to see what was going on! And it was―"

"It's  _fine_ , man," Shawn tells him with a laugh of his own―of  _relief_ ―as he walks over and sits down with him. "I don't mind that you saw. And I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you about him before. Really. I honestly would have, but he's not exactly..."

"Out?" Gus finishes.

"Uh―yeah." He breathes another laugh. "I'm not actually sure how  _he'll_  feel about the fact that you saw, but... you know. 'Slong as you don't tell anyone else, which―"

"You know I wouldn't."

"Exactly―I'm... I'm sure it won't be a problem."

"I wouldn't even really be able to tell anyone anything without knowing the guy's name or any details of what he looks like, anyway..."

Shawn hears that as the passive-aggressive request for more details that it is. And he must  _still_  be coming down from that high because his face immediately breaks into a grin, and he  _cannot_  help but tell him, and rapidly so,

"He's like―imagine if the grim reaper was sexy and in his late thirties, and if he also kind of looked like the brooding protagonist of a noir film, and also ruggedly handsome in an old-timey way, like the guy from The Birds... except with more distinctly Irish features. And―he'd kill me if I told you his real name, for reasons he'd  _also_  kill me if I told you, but... I call him Lassie. He wasn't  _always_  a fan of it, but he likes it now. Even if he wouldn't say so."

He doesn't realize, until he finishes, the sort of expression that Gus has been holding the whole time. That is, like he knows something that Shawn doesn't.

"...Damn. Sounds like the most serious relationship you've ever been in. How long have you been dating?"

_That_  pulls the air right out of Shawn's lungs again.

"Oh, I don't know if I'd  _call it serious_..." he mumbles, eyes widened down at the floor and hands wringing in his lap. He doesn't know if he'd call it  _not serious_ , either, but can he call it  _anything_? All he  _can_  really do is laugh nervously. "And... to be completely honest, Gus, that was... our first actual kiss."

The cogs are certainly turning in Gus's head now.  _Shawn Spencer, taking it_ slow _? When's the last time you didn't kiss on the first date? When's the last time you didn't_ fuck _on the first date? When's the last time you even went on multiple dates?_ Who _are you, actually, and what ditch did you bury Shawn in?_

The butterflies in his stomach leftover from earlier have begun to twist.

_Sure looked like a passionate kiss for your first one,_  he imagines Gus saying, though positive that he wouldn't.  _You've known this guy for_ how _many months, and you just now kissed him ,and you're talking like_ this _about him? You know what it sounds like to me? I think you're in―_

" _Listen_." Shawn hurries to just get another word out before his friend can possibly get on the train of saying any of that. He leans his face into his hands and turns it just enough to look at Gus again. "Don't try to get too many details out of me because I... don't  _know_  exactly what Lassie and I have, yet. I can't even say for sure whether you'll ever get to meet him. His job makes things like, twice as complicated. And before you ask,  _no_ , he isn't an international spy."

Gus immediately looks disappointed. But overall, luckily, it seems that now having an explanation for Shawn "being so weird for the past few months" weighs out. Like always, he has no trouble understanding where a subject becomes touchy. And he just wants Shawn to know―he  _repeats_  it a few too many times, honestly―that it doesn't bother him that Lassie is a guy.

"Thanks, buddy," Shawn also repeats each of those times, and means it despite everything.

Nevermind the fears he can't help but have, the longer that he goes without any kind of contact with Lassiter, he's deeply grateful that he  _can_  finally talk about it. That even if he can't give certain details, he can still tell the truth that he does want to tell.

More than anything else, he's grateful that Gus didn't just see him kissing air.

 

*

 

Part of working around the rules and maintaining the Loophole was in  _not_  touching him. In six months, barring some initial hostile collar-grabbing, Carlton rarely made or allowed physical contact. He grabbed Shawn's _shoulders_ , sure. They maybe brushed hands a few times, but almost always in the dreamscape.

Save the sort of platonic contact that occasionally came with reaping, in fact, Carlton has had next to no physical contact with  _anybody_.

_It's just a burden of the job,_ he always told himself―he  _accepted_ , truly. It was a burden of his job even before he died. And just as in life, it was in many ways also a choice. He could have hooked up, then. He could have manifested a partner, now. He could self-pleasure in  _infinite_  ways, now that he has complete control over his physical sensations! He's always had that option!

However, just as he had no interest in a pet horse with no mind of its own, a partner who was nothing more than his own imagination given physical form never seemed worth it.

_It's my fault,_  Carlton tells himself, over and over again with increasing deprecation.

Because a single slip and now he's craving it―no, he's  _starving_  for it. He is a reaper, and he is not supposed to need  _anything_ , and he has clearly failed at his job and soiled his rare deal if he couldn't even go ten years without fucking up and growing so attached to something that he  _knew_  he couldn't have―so attached that he would be willing to risk the sanctity of Life and Death and Fate for  _one_  mortal man's sake alone...

 

Carlton feels like he's dying all over again for some time. That fear of nothingness and grief for his own life returns to him, as he is sure to face consequences, now.

Some authority will come and berate him, at the very least. Smite him, at the worst. Perhaps strip him of some powers, or transfer him somewhere that he won't be able to see Shawn, let alone touch or kiss him, ever again. And he will deserve it, because he is a goddamn  _idiot_  for allowing this to happen.

He feels no doubt of that, anymore.

And yet.

The rest of the night passes without a single sign from above, below,  _or_  adjacent. Nor even a soul to reap. The loudest force in the in-between is Carlton's own heart, never quite having calmed.

 

He feels... stupid. For mostly a different reason, now.

He's beginning to think that his own sense of justice  _is_  the one and only thing that's meant to keep him from breaking the rules. That his own sense of justice may even have been what's defined those rules.

That even if he's wrong, maybe it's just  _worth it_  to be fucking happy.

 

***

 

Little Boy Cat starts getting antsy even before Shawn's peripheral catches anything. For a few seconds, he assumes that his cat is simply aware that being in the bathroom means  _bathtime_  and is thus not looking forward to it.

Then the dark shape that appears spontaneously in his mirror forces Shawn's grip to relax, and sends the cat bounding right out of it.

"Where have  _you_  been?" he asks the moment that he registers him.

He actually expected to have to wait twice as long as he did before seeing Lassiter again, and can't even force himself to feel anything but nervous, now. It just slips out. Makes him feel even more nervous for having said it.

_Elsewhere in Santa Barbara, obviously. Reaping souls. Doing my fucking job._

"In my own head," he admits―then averts his gaze, ashamed. Of having waited several days to come here  _and_  of being here now. "You just... you have to understand, Shawn. You don't really want me. I'm  _dead_."

Ever the pragmatist, Carlton could not help but envision them years down the line. A typical relationship is impossible for them. An eternity together, when all is done, is even more elusive. Shawn's soul is only safe from him so long as he remains alive. And who's to say Shawn's soul is even entirely safe from him  _now_?

Before he can explain any of that to him, however, he feels Shawn's hand slowly cover the one he has gripping the bathroom counter.

"You feel pretty alive to me," Shawn says a little breathlessly. It doesn't make a difference to him that he can only actually  _see_  Lassiter in the mirror. He can still feel a goddamn pulse. "And... you felt  _very_  alive the other night."

Carlton remembers how hard he felt his heart beating, then. He meets Shawn's eyes through the mirror. He feels it growing to that speed again.

"You..."

_What you're feeling is an illusion. I don't physically exist anymore._

"You make me  _feel_  alive."

There's no point in keeping it a secret, anymore, when Shawn already has the proof right under his fingertips. Nor when it earns him  _that_  kind of awe on Shawn's face. Nor when it feels so  _freeing_ , in and of itself, to have finally said it aloud.

"Lassie―"

"Biological functions and desires serve absolutely no purpose where I am, Shawn, and yet―I have them again. I've  _been_  having them―a  _lot_  of them, again... And god, I really shouldn't. Nothing on this plane of existence is supposed to be important enough to me―"

Somehow with only a reflection to go off of, Shawn manages to reach his hand up and grab Lassiter by the collar. He shuts his eyes as he pulls him down.

It  _is_  crazy that it doesn't bother him that the man he's kissing isn't alive, and Shawn knows it. It's crazy no matter how real he knows Lassiter to be regardless. It's fucking insane that he feels this way about  _anyone_.

But he can't help that he feels this way, can he? He couldn't help getting so attached to a guy who appeared to him and  _only_  him. He couldn't help that this guy was  _literally_  his dream man...

It's just the amount of crazy that Shawn's life needed, he thinks.

It feels like his Santa Barbara Syndrome. Like fate.

And Lassiter feels undoubtedly solid.

The next time Shawn opens his eyes―just a crack, as he's pressed against his bathroom wall and clutching at Lassiter's hair, with Lassiter's mouth on his jaw―he can see him, too. He promptly tugs the other man's head back so he can see his face.

"What happened to all that stuff about... physically manifesting?" he grins, chest heaving.

Carlton feels embarrassed for a fraction of a second. "...It's just you and your cat in here, I think I'm fine."

To keep himself from thinking about it for too long, he quickly kisses that grin right off of Shawn's face, then returns to getting his fill of Shawn's stubble against his lips. It's hardly a just few seconds later that he hears, however,

"Is that your gun, or are you just happy to see me?"

"It could be a gun if you wanted it to be," he hums against him, quite honestly.

Shawn actually _giggles_ , then, and pulls him closer. "Unless you could make mine a gun, too, it probably wouldn't be as fun."

Then he rolls his hips forward. Carlton groans.

_Note taken._

A minute or so later, Shawn poses him with another breathless question:

"Hey, uh, what was that thing you said about... being surprised what the human body is capable of?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [blue oyster cult voice] just kiss the reaper, baby, just take his hand...


	7. Chapter 7

_You're supposed to be dead, and you're not, and that's not something to be fucking proud of._

 

Even after things between them had been long returned to civility at the very least, that particular line from Lassiter hadn't left him. Neither the words  _nor_  the way he said it.

Not in a resentful sort of way, though. Shawn didn't (and especially doesn't  _now_ ) hold it against him so much as he held it against  _himself_ ―for the fact that it was true, and that he'd done nothing to help, and that he couldn't even claim responsibility. Very much of the time he'd be delighted to know he effortlessly made someone else's existence a lot harder. But not here, not even  _before_  getting all that close to him, even though his "crime" was simply being alive.

Amidst all the formal cases, he's been determined to contribute on his own time. He's been  _agonizing_ , digging through his own memories, trying to recall that night in as crisp detail as possible. Trying to pick out anything helpful.

Shawn was just barely curious in the beginning. It was frankly difficult to be more than that when he couldn't remember what it felt like to be dead, because he  _never_  felt like he was dead, because he conceptualized it as nothing more than a dream for so long, and the only evidence he had that he actually  _did_  temporarily die was someone who could only communicate through dreams and mirrors and whispers and laundromats telling him so... And technically, all that  _is_  still true.

For a while he wanted to believe it was just another mystery to solve.

Now, he has no trouble admitting that he feels he owes Lassiter. That he wants the answer not just for himself, but to give to  _him_. For all the trouble that man has gone to.

Shawn has driven over this exact stretch of road probably more than a hundred times in the past few months. It's not exactly out of his way, of course, as one of the major routes that passes through Santa Barbara. But many of those times  _were_  for the specific purpose of trying to jog his memory. Get those associations going.

He's also stood in this very same ditch that he died in a handful of times before. Though this is the first time since that...  _climactic_  night with Lassiter.

For the most part, Shawn thinks that he had his theory down before then. He  _did_  recall every last detail of his death-but-not-death. And all that he got... was that he truly was not conscious. It was more passive than an actual decision. He wasn't  _defying_  anything. And perhaps that's exactly it?

Whereas Lassiter―based on what the man himself has confessed―pled with his reaper, and argued with the rules so they could suit him, and  _demanded_  a deal... it didn't occur to Shawn for one moment that there even  _were_ rules. He didn't face them head-on or even maneuver around them. He went under them as easily as he walks under doorways.

In life, he can get pretty much whatever he wants so long as he's confident about it. He gets into "exclusive" places all the time without any credentials, simply because he makes himself look like he belongs there! Nine times out of then, even people who very much belong there are fooled just as well!

It's less practical and more philosophical, but he doesn't see why it couldn't apply. Maybe Shawn was just mistaken for someone who had the right to walk between life and death as he pleased.

His other theory is that he was never actually meant to die in the first place and that the impact only knocked his soul a bit loose. But he doesn't know enough about how souls work to provide evidence for that.

 _What are you doing here?_  is whispered into Shawn's ear the moment he parks his motorcycle, just as he anticipated.

"I think I might know why I didn't die," he says casually. At which Lassiter manifests before his very eyes.

A few more hours and this will become a liminal space, anyway, Carlton figures. The road is empty and so is the field behind them. He can't find it in him to hide himself regardless.

"You do?"

Now, Shawn  _also_  anticipated some kind of excitement, or at least a sign of being impressed, or possibly some skepticism. He didn't think he'd find  _this_  sort of intensity on Lassiter's face.

"Uh... well, it's obviously not coming from the same frame of reference as you have, but it is  _my_  soul that all this is about, so." He loses himself, briefly, in the other man's gaze. "...I do feel pretty confident that I'm right. And I... thought I'd tell you now, since you mentioned it was your birthday and―"

"Don't tell me," Carlton snaps before Shawn can go any further.

He had a feeling this day would eventually come. He just didn't think it would be so soon.

Shawn definitely didn't anticipate that.

"What?" Lassiter begins to pace, but Shawn grabs him by the sleeve, his brow furrowed painfully deep. " _Don't_  tell you? Are you crazy? It's what you've been trying to figure out for... over  _seven_  months, now, Lassie―"

Carlton twists around and throws his arms up.

"And if I get an answer, then I won't have any excuse to  _stick around_ , Shawn."

 

Indulging in this sort of relationship with a soul that he's sworn to investigate is one thing. Doing so with one that he has absolutely no business with, however...

That just seems like pushing his luck.

He doesn't think he's had  _any_  desire to wrap up this "investigation" in a while, in fact.

 

It shouldn't be that much of a surprise to him, in retrospect. But Shawn thinks he would feel tears welling up in any case.

"You're telling me that I did all that soul-searching for nothing?" he croaks out.

Carlton's arms drop as a short breath of a laugh falls out of him. "A very small fraction of all the soul-searching  _I've_  done, I'm sure. And which I'll have to continue to do, for... as long as it takes." He doesn't want to say  _the rest of your life_.

Shawn seems to be able to tell.

"...Luckily," Carlton all but whispers, gently pushing both hands inside Shawn's coat so that they rest on either side of his waist, "I still have a very long way to go."

Knowing that he spent so much time agonizing over that mystery is still frustrating. Although, even if he has to keep it to himself... he does still find it satisfying to have  _some_  answer, too.

Shawn also has to once again  _agree_ , looking around this roadside ditch, now―at the long stretch of empty highway, at the powerlines in the distance, at the grass and mud at his feet... all as he leans against his motorcycle and embraces the man and reaper whom he is now tentatively calling his boyfriend―

It really does look like an ideal place to die.

Carlton follows his gaze, but with a somewhat different train of thought.

"Just do one favor for me, please."

Shawn smirks back up at him. "Is it a sexy favor?"

"Don't let your soul leave your body unless you plan on dying, anymore, okay?" He holds Shawn tighter and lets out a heavy sigh. "Astral projection is okay, but you're on thin fucking ice."

At that, all Shawn can think to do is scoff.

" _Please_. Like I'm ever actually gonna die."

 

***

 

Getting to transfer to Santa Barbara was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Her superiors had been telling her for years that she'd make an excellent detective, that the only problem was a lack of availability. She scored the highest on the Detective's Exam, out of anyone else. She was able to move her career exactly where she wanted to be―where her family was, where Scott was, where half of her childhood was.

She was able to work alongside a head detective. A female head detective who's the  _youngest_  to have ever made the position, at that.

 _How_  did she manage to screw it up so quickly?

Part of Juliet wants to just blame Santa Barbara. This city has been rife with all sorts of the weirdest crime she's ever seen, since she got here. And she worked in  _Miami_! Of  _course_  she expected to find it much tamer than this!

But cities don't kill people. People kill people. Crazy vengeful bitches with misdirected rage, way too many candles, and an  _axe_  kill people.

It was supposed to be her job to keep things like this from happening! And she just  _had_  to be naive enough to think that Alice Bundy's motives were genuine, didn't she? She just HAD to have a trusting enough heart to follow an OBVIOUS murderer into a creepy, abandoned mental hospital, made even more creepy by her own decoration... She just―

She can't help but remember all the naysayers she did have, in the academy, telling her that she wasn't cynical enough for this line of work.

She feels so  _stupid_.

 

"You're only going to feel worse the longer you keep staring at your own head, you know."

Detective O'Hara turns sharply at the sound of his voice, with that familiar look of a soul that would be crying their eyes out if they only could. Carlton is frankly surprised that she doesn't look worse, considering her absolutely horrific death scene.

He can't  _remember_  the last time he reaped the victim of a decapitation. Least of all one by something so primal as an axe.

When all she does is stare up at him, he tells her, "Alice Bundy is being arrested outside as we speak. Spencer and Guster have tackled her in the woods out back, while she was trying to escape. Not only will she be punished to the full extent of the law in  _this_  life, but she also seems like a good contender for eternal torture in the next. Now... I do wish that I could tell you that no one but forensics will have to see you like this, but if I directly  _told_  Spencer not to try and come up here, it's the very first thing he would do. But you can be rest assured knowing that Guster won't dare step foot in the building."

"Oh god,  _Gus_ ," she breathes, suddenly wide-eyed and with all her previous confusion gone from her face. She clutches at the wooden panels of the floor and stares downward. "I'm so selfish, I didn't even think about...  _God_ , what the hell, I meet  _one_ good guy that I actually have high hopes about for once, and―and I'm only twenty-goddamn-six, I barely got to do  _anything_..."

Damn. Talk about deja vu.

Carlton kneels on the floor beside her before her sorrow can grow any deeper.

"O'Hara," he says simply.

She looks up again. This time, with curiosity in her haze of grief as he searches his face for something. "Do I know you?"

"You... may have caught a glimpse of me once or twice before." He means both his memorial photo, and flashes of him that she may have caught on accident. "What matters, though, is that  _I_  know  _you_. And I have to tell you―other than believing that Shawn was actually a psychic? You were truly an exceptional detective for your lack of experience."

Juliet does, finally, seem comforted by that. But only for a moment.

"Wait―Shawn...  _wasn't_ ―?"

"Don't beat yourself up  _too_  bad for falling for it. His 'visions' may be obviously performative, but he's... very good at what he does. And smarter than he acts. And..."

And Carlton's satisfaction over finally being able to tell someone at the SBPD the  _truth_  really turned into him being sentimental that quickly, huh.

He shouldn't be feeling  _satisfied_  about anything right now, though. This case has been nothing but tragic from beginning to end. Doreen Harthan was hard enough to reap after how little life she lived, and the love she left behind, and the cruelty of her murder-and all on a Halloween night, to boot. Bianca Simmons could only be left a ghost, for how confused she was in both life and death. To top it all off, the root of the first murder can be traced  _directly_  back to Shawn, who helped spread the urban legend of Scary Sherry in the first place.

"You sound like you know him," Juliet sniffs. "But―aren't you... a grim reaper, or an angel, or something?"

And now this, the loss of Shawn's own teammate and the woman of his best friend's affections. Though perhaps... not for long.

"I do, and I am. All that being said... I'll cut to the chase, Detective. I can give you the traditional route to the afterlife, and you would easily find heaven. I have no doubt about that. But I'd like to propose an alternative that may very well suit your needs."

He extends his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen on the soundtrack: [8tracks](https://8tracks.com/captainlucifer/santa-barbara-s-finest-fst) (with commentary on each song) / [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpO1ETfG6QGYgBcuAhbsfV7iXZKEpGjqD)
> 
> reblog the fic graphic: [X](http://bassiter.tumblr.com/post/179606456697)
> 
> this premise probably COULD have fit into something much longer, but i kept it concise mainly because i didn't get the full idea until about halfway through october and i really wanted to finish it before halloween. btw, every single case mentioned other than lassiter's death was canon, and all of them after the back bay killer were the ones that happened in s1. 
> 
> also, in full seriousness, shawn literally MUST have something supernatural going on about him, and this was a really fun way to explore that.
> 
> happy halloween!!!


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